New ^ mark in package.json file

Question

After the last npm update, I found that some versions of packages start with ^ . I can not find any information about this due to filtering the traces of SOS using search engines. So it looks like this:

 "grunt-autoprefixer": "^0.4.2", "grunt-bower-install": "^0.7.0", "grunt-concurrent": "^0.4.3", "grunt-contrib-clean": "~0.5.0", 

Some old ~ . I will be grateful for any sympathy or information about this.

I have a suggestion that it indicates that the witch packages have been updated.

Answer 1

Karet, [...] will update you to the latest major version (first number). ^ 1.2.3 will match any release 1.xx, including 1.3.0, but will work on 2.0.0.

http://fredkschott.com/post/2014/02/npm-no-longer-defaults-to-tildes/