Is it possible to tell whether a stash has already been applied, and therefore is no longer required, without doing git stash apply? Assume that I'm only using one branch.
This could be prevented by using pop rather than apply when applying a stash, and therefore get rid of the stash each time it gets applied. However, I sometimes use git stash to keep a snapshot of work in progress, rather than only using it to switch from one task to another. Using pop would defeat that somewhat.
Just make a diff and you will see.
git diff HEAD stash@{0}