1) is this the proper forum for asking general git usage questions, such as "how to"? If not, what is?
2) I am unsure that I did things the "proper" way. I have a git maintained subdirectory. I made some changes and saved them in the working directory, but did not "git add" or "git commit" them. I then decided that I really messed up what I was doing (basically reformatting some source code). So to revert the changes back to what was last committed, I did a "git reset --hard HEAD". I think this is the proper way. But I picked up that command in the section of the documentation which was talking about abandoning a "git merge" attempt. What I did worked, but is it the proper way? If not, what is?
3) More generically, suppose I have a file in my working directory that I want to put back the way it was "n" commits ago. The best that I can see, so far, is "git show HEAD~n:file >|file", replacing the "n" and "file" with appropriate values.