Caret ^

• Exponents: in Excel, Google Sheets, calculators and plain text, 2^3 means 2 to the third power, which is 8. =A1^2 squares a cell.
• Chat shorthand: a lone ^ under someone’s message means “this” or “I agree with the above.”
• Control keys: older documentation writes Ctrl+C as ^C.
• Proofreading: editors use a caret-shaped mark to show where text should be inserted. The dedicated proofreading character is ‸.

The ^ on your keyboard is the ASCII character Unicode calls circumflex accent, though nearly everyone calls it a caret or hat.

The caret means different things in different languages, so check before you rely on it:

• Bitwise XOR in C, C++, Java, JavaScript and Python: 5 ^ 3 is 6, not 125. Use ** or a pow function for powers.
• Regular expressions: ^ anchors a match to the start of a line, and inside brackets it negates a set: [^0-9] matches anything except a digit.
• Git: HEAD^ means the parent of the current commit.
• npm versions: ^1.2.3 allows minor and patch updates (1.x.x) but not 2.0.0.
• LaTeX: x^2 makes a superscript. To print the character itself in text, use \textasciicircum.

• ˆ (modifier letter circumflex) is a spacing accent used in phonetics; it is smaller and sits higher.
• ‸ (caret) is the typographic insertion mark that sits low, at the baseline.
• ∧ (logical and) is a math and logic operator, wider and taller than ^.
• ⌃ is the Mac Control key symbol, not the caret.

To put a circumflex on a letter, as in crème brûlée or château, you don’t type ^ next to the letter. On a Mac, press Option+I, then the letter. On Windows, the US-International layout makes ^ a dead key: press Shift+6, then e for ê. On phones, long-press the vowel.