How to delete a stash created with git stash create?

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Git stash seems to do a lot of what I want, except that it is a little hard to script, as the if you have no changes, then git stash; git stash pop will do something different than if you do have changes in your repository.

It appears that git stash create is the answer to that problem, and everything works, except for one thing… I can’t get rid of the created stash. Is there any way to get rid of the stash?

To make it 100% clear what I am doing:

Create the stash:

~/tmp/a(master) $ git stash create 
60629375d0eb12348f9d31933dd348ad0f038435
~/tmp/a(master) $ git st
# On branch master
# Changes to be committed:
#   (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
#
#   new file:   b
#
~/tmp/a(master) $ git reset --hard
HEAD is now at 555d572 log message

Use the stash:

~/tmp/a(master) $ git apply 60629375d0eb12348f9d31933dd348ad0f038435
fatal: can't open patch '60629375d0eb12348f9d31933dd348ad0f038435': No such file or directory
~/tmp/a(master) $ git stash apply 60629375d0eb12348f9d31933dd348ad0f038435
# On branch master
# Changes to be committed:
#   (use "git reset HEAD <file>..." to unstage)
#
#   new file:   b
#

Delete the stash: (except that this last bit doesn’t work)

~/tmp/a(master) $ git stash drop !$
git stash drop 60629375d0eb12348f9d31933dd348ad0f038435
'60629375d0eb12348f9d31933dd348ad0f038435' is not a stash reference

12 s
12

git stash drop takes no parameter – which drops the top stash – or a stash reference which looks like: stash@{n} which n nominates which stash to drop. You can’t pass a commit id to git stash drop.

git stash drop            # drop top hash, stash@{0}
git stash drop stash@{n}  # drop specific stash - see git stash list

Dropping a stash will change the stash@{n} designations of all stashes further down the stack.

I’m not sure why you think need to drop a stash because if you are using stash create a stash entry isn’t created for your “stash” so there isn’t anything to drop.

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