How to get parent of specific commit in Git?

Question

I have commit number. I would like to get previous commit number(parent). I need commits from current branch.

Answer 1

You can use git rev-parse for this.

# Output hash of the first parent
git rev-parse $commit^

# Nth parent
git rev-parse $commit^N

# All parents
git rev-parse $commit^@

These constructs are explained in git help rev-parse:

 ^, e.g. HEAD^, v1.5.1^0
     A suffix ^ to a revision parameter means the first
     parent of that commit object.  ^ means the th
     parent (i.e.  ^ is equivalent to ^1). As a
     special rule, ^0 means the commit itself and is
     used when  is the object name of a tag object that
     refers to a commit object.

 ...

 ^@, e.g. HEAD^@
     A suffix ^ followed by an at sign is the same as listing
     all parents of  (meaning, include anything
     reachable from its parents, but not the commit itself).