We report direct numerical simulations of subsonic, transonic and supersonic flows past a circular cylinder. The far upstream Mach number Ma and the diameter-based Reynolds number Re in these three simulations are (Ma = 0.2, Re = 10000), (Ma = 0.9, Re = 3900) and (Ma = 1.2, Re = 10000), respectively. We present tracer particle path-line histogram, conditional histogram and zonal histogram data extracted from the direct numerical simulations. We focus on the characteristics of particle instantaneous flow reversal and their dependencies on Mach number and tracer release position. Such tracer path-line statistics have rarely, if at all, been reported in the literature on compressible subsonic, transonic and supersonic flows past a circular cylinder. In the subsonic flow, histogram profiles of tracer particles released from a region very close to the wall and slightly behind the mean flow separation location display unexpected persistent oscillations. No similar oscillations are detected from histograms of tracer particles released from any other regions of this subsonic flow. The oscillation frequency is 50 times of the periodic vortex shedding frequency, reflecting the effect of a very-small-magnitude wavy motion in a region very close to the wall and slightly behind the mean flow separation location. No similar high-frequency oscillations are observed in the transonic and the supersonic flow tracer particle histograms. This is likely because, at Ma > 0.8, periodic vortex shedding ceases to exist and the near-wake becomes a quasi-laminar recirculation zone bounded by a pair of converging slip-layers with a neck opening to the far-wake. Another interesting feature observed in the present study is that, at Ma = 0.9, the turbulent far-wake behind the pair of tail shockwaves experiences a distinct transverse confinement. This inhibited wake growth is absent in both the subsonic case and the supersonic case.