[lisper]

Well, I'm being a little facetious. I do understand what the index is and what it's used for (but not why it's called the "index" instead of, say, the "stage"). What I don't understand is why the index exists as a separate abstraction. You could have the exact same effect by, for example, doing a git stash, and then popping changes out of the stash into your (now clean) working directory. The WD in effect plays the role of the index, and you get the same result, but with fewer abstractions, fewer commands, and less confusion.

But I hold Linus in high enough regard to take very seriously the possibility that the index is a reflection of some deep wisdom that I have missed. That's the real reason I raise this every now and again.

[Cyranix]

I'm not sure I see how you could use `git stash` to accomplish the same thing. Running `git stash && git stash pop` is almost a no-op, so you don't get the benefits described above. Am I missing something?

[lisper]

I thought you could pull individual files out a stash, but it seems I was wrong about that. But it's not hard to imagine a variation of git stash that allowed you to select individual files from a stash to pull back into your working directory.