Why stashing saves work temporarily in Git - See It in Action

Why Stashing Saves Work Temporarily in Git

📖 Scenario: You are working on a project using Git. You started making changes to a file but suddenly need to switch to another task on a different branch. You want to save your current changes safely without committing them yet.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to use Git stash to save your current work temporarily, switch branches, and then restore your saved changes later.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a new file with some content

Make changes to the file

Use git stash to save changes temporarily

Switch to another branch

Restore the stashed changes

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Developers often need to pause their current work to fix urgent bugs or switch branches. Stashing lets them save unfinished work safely without committing incomplete changes.

💼 Career

Knowing how to use git stash is essential for developers and DevOps engineers to manage code changes efficiently and avoid losing work during multitasking.

1

Initialize repo, create a new file and make initial commit

Initialize a Git repository, create a file named notes.txt and add the line Hello, this is my first note. to it, then add and commit the file.

Git

# Initialize Git repo, create notes.txt with the line, add and commit it
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use git init to create a repo, echo > file to write to file, git add and git commit -m "msg".

2

Make changes to the file

Add the line Adding a second line to notes.txt to the file notes.txt without deleting the first line.

Git

git init
echo "Hello, this is my first note." > notes.txt
git add notes.txt
git commit -m "Initial commit"
# Add the second line to notes.txt
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use >> to append text to a file.

3

Save changes temporarily using git stash and switch branches

Use git stash to save your current changes temporarily, then create and switch to a new branch named urgent.

Git

git init
echo "Hello, this is my first note." > notes.txt
git add notes.txt
git commit -m "Initial commit"
echo "Adding a second line to notes.txt" >> notes.txt
# Save changes with git stash and switch to urgent branch
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Run git stash to save changes, then git checkout -b urgent to switch branches.

4

Switch back and restore stashed changes

Switch back to the main branch and use git stash pop to restore your saved changes.

Git

git init
echo "Hello, this is my first note." > notes.txt
git add notes.txt
git commit -m "Initial commit"
echo "Adding a second line to notes.txt" >> notes.txt
git stash
git checkout -b urgent
# Switch back to main and restore with git stash pop
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use git checkout main to switch back, then git stash pop to restore and remove the stash.