HEAD and ORIG_HEAD in Git

Question

What do these symbols refer to and what do they mean?

(I can't find any explanation in official documentation)

Answer 1

HEAD is (direct or indirect, i.e. symbolic) reference to the current commit. It is a commit that you have checked in the working directory (unless you made some changes, or equivalent), and it is a commit on top of which "git commit" would make a new one. Usually HEAD is symbolic reference to some other named branch; this branch is currently checked out branch, or current branch. HEAD can also point directly to a commit; this state is called "detached HEAD", and can be understood as being on unnamed, anonymous branch.

And @ alone is a shortcut for HEAD, since Git 1.8.5

ORIG_HEAD is previous state of HEAD, set by commands that have possibly dangerous behavior, to be easy to revert them. It is less useful now that Git has reflog: HEAD@{1} is roughly equivalent to ORIG_HEAD (HEAD@{1} is always last value of HEAD, ORIG_HEAD is last value of HEAD before dangerous operation).

For more information read git(1) manpage / [gitrevisions(7) manpage][git-revisions], Git User's Manual, the Git Community Book and Git Glossary