

Semver explained – why there's a caret (^) in my package.json? - bytearcher
http://bytearcher.com/articles/semver-explained-why-theres-a-caret-in-my-package-json/

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lemevi
I've seen those characters in package.json but I never really bothered to look
up how they worked, but now I will use them. Great article. I wonder though
why they didn't go with using asterisk instead? Like say you used 1. _._ in
package.json, now you'll get all updates up until 2.0.0 comes out.

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function_seven
> Like say you used 1.∗.∗ in package.json, now you'll get all updates up until
> 2.0.0 comes out.

I think the caret and tilde indicate that the package must be at the given
version _or greater_. Asterisks wouldn't allow you to specify a lower bound.

(HN's comment system ate your asterisks. I don't know how to get around that,
so I replaced them with U+2217 chars)

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benatkin
There's an error here:

> Lets say you are using version 1.3.4 of a library with a caret (~) as your
> dependency.

s/caret/tilde/

Awesome post! This is very important and needs to be presented in simple
terms.

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bytearcher
Thanks so much for pointing out! Consistent effort was made to always pair the
symbol with the keyword "tilde (~)" but it still managed to wrong once :)

