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About this tool
Explain what a caret, tilde, hyphen, x or comparator semver range actually allows, in plain English with examples.
This tool desugars any npm-style semver range — caret, tilde, hyphen, x-range, comparators or || unions — into its exact comparator form and a plain-English sentence describing which versions it allows. It implements the node-semver range grammar that npm, pnpm and yarn share, so ^1.2.3 becomes >=1.2.3 <2.0.0 and ^0.2.3 becomes >=0.2.3 <0.3.0. Developers reviewing package.json entries can also test a specific version against the range and see worked allowed/blocked examples.
Open Semver Range Explainer on AltFTool — it loads instantly in your browser.
Paste your code or data sample into the workspace.
Pick the format, conversion, or analysis you need.
Copy the polished result straight back into your project.
Caret, tilde, x-range, hyphen and partial-comparator desugaring match npm's own semver library.
Every range becomes one readable sentence with explicit inclusive and exclusive bounds.
Type any concrete version and get an immediate satisfies / does-not-satisfy verdict with pre-release handling.
^1.2.3 allows every version from 1.2.3 up to but not including 2.0.0 — it freezes the left-most non-zero digit. That makes it stricter for 0.x packages: ^0.2.3 only allows up to 0.3.0 (exclusive), and ^0.0.3 allows only 0.0.3 itself.
~1.2.3 allows only patch updates (>=1.2.3 <1.3.0), while ^1.2.3 also allows minor updates (>=1.2.3 <2.0.0). For 0.2.x versions the two behave identically, because the caret then freezes the minor digit just as the tilde does.
Usually not. Under node-semver rules a pre-release version only satisfies a range that explicitly includes a pre-release tag on the same major.minor.patch — so 2.0.0-beta.1 does not match ^1.2.3 or even >=1.0.0, but 1.2.3-beta.2 does match >=1.2.3-beta.1. This prevents npm from silently installing unstable builds.
It means >=1.2.3 <2.4.0. The left side is inclusive, and a partial right side is rounded up: '- 2.3' becomes anything below 2.4.0 and '- 2' becomes anything below 3.0.0, while a full right side like '- 2.3.4' is inclusive (<=2.3.4).