Referring to the previous/next commit in git?

Question

I have seen git commands use a syntax such as HEAD~, but I haven\'t been able to find this syntax in the Git Reference Manual.

Here is what I have under

Answer 1

Inspired by @cexbrayat's answer, I find it useful to think of it this way:

How to refer to something in a commit's ancestry, where a commit can have multiple parents:

• ^n specifies which parent

• ~n specifies which generation

Both default to one.

Answer 2

You have a very clear explanation of how this works in the chapter on Acenstry References in Pro Git:

• ~ is used to get the first parent.
• ^ can be used to get the other parents (^2, for example, for a merge).

But you don't have a simple way to reference the next commit, even if there are more convoluted ways to get it.

Answer 3

To simply answer the question from title (since that's what got me here from Google):

To checkout the previous commit:

git checkout HEAD^

To checkout the next commit (assuming there's no branching):

git checkout `git log --reverse --ancestry-path HEAD..master | head -n 1 | cut -d \  -f 2`