Understanding git log graph output

Question

I'm confused by the following pattern I keep seeing:

*   1c49c26      Merge branch 'master' of https://<revoked>.git
|\
| * 5e072f2      Updating todo
* | 13e8f22      Adding maven
|/
* da94a41        Updating pom

So someone branched, did a tiny bit of work, and then merged the remote master branch. But what does asterisk mean versus pipe? Note that it changed between 'Adding maven' and 'updating todo' - one has an asterisk and one has a pipe

Answer 1

The asterisk shows to which branch the commit belongs.

Here 13e8f22 was commited to the "left" branch and 5e072f2 to the "right" one. A pipe is displayed on the other branches.