What does the exclamation mark mean in git config alias?

Question

I just see a git config command as below:

git config --global alias.out \\!\"git fetch; git cherry origin/HEAD -v\"

what does it mean? Is i

Answer 1

From the git-config manual:

If the alias expansion is prefixed with an exclamation point, it will be treated as a shell command.

Answer 2

From https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Basics-Git-Aliases

However, maybe you want to run an external command, rather than a Git subcommand. In that case, you start the command with a ! character

So if you only want to use git subcommand, you don't need to use ! here.

But if you want to use git command/external command, then you need !.