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.
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