git stash: where did the files in my directory go?

Question

I have a bad feeling my work is lost. Is there a way to possibly get them back?

Here's a gist of what I did:

# Initially
$ git init -q
$ echo foo >foo
$ git add foo
$ git commit -m initial
[master (root-commit) 399ac4f] initial
 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+)
 create mode 100644 foo

# Work work work
$ rm foo
$ mkdir foo && echo bar >foo/bar

# This is where things went bad
$ git stash
Saved working directory and index state WIP on master: 399ac4f initial
HEAD is now at 399ac4f initial
$ git stash pop
Removing foo
# On branch master
# ...
no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")
Dropped refs/stash@{0} (c8353a2223b73ceb9aa73fac64829919b68c86e9)

# What happened to my work!?
$ find foo
find: foo: No such file or directory

$ git --version
git version 1.7.11.3

Unfortulately, I don't think foo/bar ever saw the repository/index, as I hadn't run any git commands on it prior to this.

Answer 1

You can easily recover the lost stash (you can see its revision on the screen). But it is no use.

git stash does not save new files (foo/ directory content in your case), but it does git reset --hard before exit. And that restores the working directory which effectively removes foo/.

I suggest using some kind of deleted files recovering tool.

P.S. Sent an email about this into git mailing list. They said it is a bug, because git stash is intended to be a safe command. But for now just use git stash -u. This way git saves to the stash all (even untracked) files

Answer 2

Im a "Git stash \ Git stash apply"-man myself, but this question and answer should probably help.

How to recover a dropped stash in Git?