Git · Senior · Question 30 of 76
What is the index (staging area) technically?
- 1A hidden branch that holds the upcoming commit
- ✓Correct answer: A binary file of paths, blob hashes and stat data
- 3A folder with full copies of all the staged files
Explanation
.git/index stores the next commit's tree in flat form plus cached metadata (size, mtime), so Git can skip rehashing unchanged files. During conflicts it holds three stages per path.