What is an Absolute Pathname vs a Relative Pathname

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Posted on 16 Aug 2022, this text provides information on Syllabus Queries related to Course Queries. Please note that while accuracy is prioritized, the data presented might not be entirely correct or up-to-date. This information is offered for general knowledge and informational purposes only, and should not be considered as a substitute for professional advice.

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manpreet Tuteehub forum best answer Best Answer 2 years ago

 

Like the title says, what is the difference between an absolute and relative pathname? I'm taking a Computer Organization class right now, and the lecture I'm in is a crash course in Unix. The lecture slides say:

 The pathnames described in the previous slides start at the root. 
 These pathnames are called 'absolute pathnames'

For reference, the "previous slides" basically showed a file tree with the root directory / as the top node.

The slide after it says:

If we are in the directory /home/chrisc, the relative pathname of the 
file 'syllabus' in the directory /home/chrisc/comporg/ is:
comporg/syllabus

I'm still confused by what the difference is between an absolute and relative pathname. For example, I'm on a Mac. My root directory is /. To get to my Documents from /, I would have to do cd /Users/Daniel/Documents.

Once in my documents, I need to access a folder called School. If I want to get to School, I would do cd School.

From this understanding, is the relative path for any given file basically the file path beneath the directory you are currently "standing in"?

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manpreet 2 years ago

You are correct in your assumption.

the relative path is the path minus the output from pwd.

the absolute path always starts from the root "/" directory.

example:

if you have just logged in you are in your home directory - /home/user - and have a file text.txt in your home directory.

the relative path is text.txt

the absolute path is /home/user/text.txt


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