Absolute and Relative Paths

Path Separator

• First off: in UNIX, the path separator is the forward slash: / (as opposed to Doze which chose the backslash, \)

Relative Paths

• Don’t begin with a /

• Interpreted relative to the current working directory (CWD)

Being in my home directory, change into the Documents subdirectory of it

$ pwd
/home/jfasch
$ cd Documents
$ pwd
/home/jfasch/Documents

From there, change into its neighbor directory, Downloads

$ cd ../Downloads
$ pwd
/home/jfasch/Downloads

Absolute Paths

• Start with a /

• “Relative” to the root directory

• ⟶ Independent of CWD

$ cd /etc
$ pwd
/etc

Special Paths

• /: root directory - where it all begins

• ~: home directory of the user

  $ id -u
  1000
  $ id -un
  jfasch
  $ pwd
  /etc
  $ cd ~
  $ pwd
  /home/jfasch
  

• ~someone-else: home directory of someone else

• .: current working directory

  $ pwd
  /home/jfasch
  $ cd .
  $ pwd
  /home/jfasch
  

• ..: parent directory of CWD

  $ cd ..
  $ pwd
  /home
  

  $ ls -l
  total 0
  drwx------. 1 jfasch       jfasch       554 Mar  8 10:51 jfasch
  drwx------. 1 someone-else someone-else  92 Mar  3 14:12 someone-else
  

  . and .. are regular path components …

  $ cd ~jfasch/../someone-else
  $ pwd
  /home/someone-else