Where did git put my files?

[Ryan Schmidt]

I am working on implementing https://trac.macports.org/ticket/56055. As a result, I have a number of generated files in the /dist/ directory that I was working with, and a number of hand-crafted variations of those files for experimentation.

I needed to take a break from this task, and switch to a different branch to deal with an unrelated issue. To do this, I was first required to stash or commit my unfinished work. I used git stash, followed by git checkout my-other-branch. After finishing work there, I returned to my original branch with git checkout my-original-branch, and restored my stashed work with git stash pop. But the /dist/ directory is now gone.

Where did git put these files? The /dist/ directory is mentioned in .gitignore. Did it delete them? If so I can regenerate them but it is not convenient and there was no notification that my work would be deleted. I realize that preservation of developer work is a Subversion design philosophy, and that the Git design philosophy is to take the opposite approach of Subversion, so deleting my work is probably intentional, but on the off chance that it's retrievable, I thought I'd ask.