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    Posting here to hopefully catch people that don't quite think this through, but both ^ and ~ assumes you can trust minor and point releases from your dependencies. If you are publishing a library and want other people to trust you, DO NOT BLINDLY ACCEPT DOWNSTREAM DEPENDENCIES. A bad dot release from your dependency can cause a chain reaction upstream, and will have people knocking at YOUR door when things go pear shaped. This is another huge reason to use npm shrinkwrap on your production code. Commented Feb 9, 2015 at 18:33
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    You can also just do away with all the nonsense of npm prepending your versions with a ^ or a ~. Set this if you want to have tight control over your versions: npm config set save-prefix='' Commented Jul 8, 2015 at 6:11
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    @prasanthv is right: from docs.npmjs.com/misc/semver#caret-ranges-1-2-3-0-2-5-0-0-4: Caret Ranges ^1.2.3 ^0.2.5 ^0.0.4. Allows changes that do not modify the left-most non-zero digit in the [major, minor, patch] tuple. In other words, this allows patch and minor updates for versions 1.0.0 and above, patch updates for versions 0.X >=0.1.0, and no updates for versions 0.0.X. Commented Oct 11, 2015 at 16:19
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    @jgillich in semver when you use 0.2.x, 2 isn't a major version. That's why docs.npmjs.com used the specific words: the left-most non-zero digit. Also what about this case: ^0.0.4 means 0.0.4 Commented Oct 12, 2015 at 10:14
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    @FagnerBrack: The specific example you provided is correct, but generally your way of thinking is wrong. An example: let's say you have package A in 3 versions: 0.0.1, 0.0.2 and 0.0.3. There is a bug in 0.0.1 so you want to have at least 0.0.2 in your package B. If you write 0.0.x you'll get 0.0.3, which is OK. But if some other package C requires both B and A and additionally has constrain "A": "<0.0.2" you'll get 0.0.1 without showing any conflict issue, which is not what you want. Using tilde ~0.0.2 should help you avoid this issue. Commented Oct 22, 2015 at 14:22