How to reverse apply a stash?

git checkout -f

will remove any non-commit changes.

git stash[save] takes your working directory state, and your index state, and stashes them away, setting index and working area to HEAD version.

git stash apply brings back those changes, so git reset --hard would remove them again.

git stash pop brings back those changes and removes top stashed change, so git stash [save] would return to previous (pre-pop) state in this case.

According to the git-stash manpage, "A stash is represented as a commit whose tree records the state of the working directory, and its first parent is the commit at HEAD when the stash was created," and git stash show -p gives us "the changes recorded in the stash as a diff between the stashed state and its original parent.

To keep your other changes intact, use git stash show -p | patch --reverse as in the following:

$ git init
Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/repo/.git/

$ echo Hello, world >messages

$ git add messages

$ git commit -am 'Initial commit'
[master (root-commit)]: created 1ff2478: "Initial commit"
 1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
 create mode 100644 messages

$ echo Hello again >>messages

$ git stash

$ git status
# On branch master
nothing to commit (working directory clean)

$ git stash apply
# On branch master
# Changed but not updated:
#   (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed)
#   (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory)
#
#       modified:   messages
#
no changes added to commit (use "git add" and/or "git commit -a")

$ echo Howdy all >>messages

$ git diff
diff --git a/messages b/messages
index a5c1966..eade523 100644
--- a/messages
+++ b/messages
@@ -1 +1,3 @@
 Hello, world
+Hello again
+Howdy all

$ git stash show -p | patch --reverse
patching file messages
Hunk #1 succeeded at 1 with fuzz 1.

$ git diff
diff --git a/messages b/messages
index a5c1966..364fc91 100644
--- a/messages
+++ b/messages
@@ -1 +1,2 @@
 Hello, world
+Howdy all

Edit:

A light improvement to this is to use git apply in place of patch:

git stash show -p | git apply --reverse

Alternatively, you can also use git apply -R as a shorthand to git apply --reverse.

I've been finding this really handy lately...

The V1 git man page had a reference about un-applying a stash. The excerpt is below.

The newer V2 git man page doesn't include any reference to un-applying a stash but the below still works well

Un-applying a Stash In some use case scenarios you might want to apply stashed changes, do some work, but then un-apply those changes that originally came from the stash. Git does not provide such a stash un-apply command, but it is possible to achieve the effect by simply retrieving the patch associated with a stash and applying it in reverse:

$ git stash show -p stash@{0} | git apply -R

Again, if you don’t specify a stash, Git assumes the most recent stash:

$ git stash show -p | git apply -R

You may want to create an alias and effectively add a stash-unapply command to your Git. For example:

$ git config --global alias.stash-unapply '!git stash show -p | git apply -R'
$ git stash apply
$ #... work work work
$ git stash-unapply