I had a directory such that$ ls$ README.md testA.c testB.c a_large_folder another_foldermy most recent add->commit->push consisted of$ README.md testA.cNormally, my lazy self is used to doing git add . but this time I simply wanted to add a_large_folder. When I did,$ git add a_large_folderI was prompted back fatal: pathspec 'a_large_folder' did not match any files. So of course I googled git add folders with the first SO answer saying to git add <folder>/*. Well, I stupidly wrote git add a_large_folder\ (notice the wrong slash). This resulted in, >as if it executed an interpeter. I, again being stupid, wrote :q because I've been in vim all day so I wasn't thinking about whether that would actually quit or not. Now, all of my files after my most recent commit are gone; aka only READ.md testA.c are left in my directory. The other stuff appears as if it's been rm -rfNot a big deal but curious why this deleted my files/folders in this directory.
After git, folders and files gone
git
My guess: you did not have the directory a_large_folder inside when running git add.This is the only reason for git add a_large_folder to report:pathspec 'a_large_folder' did not match any filesThe syntax is correct and works for either for specific files as well as for a containing directory. See add.c.If you confirmed your second command which you split over several lines, it also failed with:fatal: pathspec 'a_large_folder:q' did not match any files