File Paths

A file path specifies the location of a file in a computer’s file system structure. They can be used to locate files and web resources, including:

• Media files, such as images
• Links to CSS stylesheets for a web page
• Files that may link to programs, such as CDNs, frameworks, or Node applications
• Other files, such as JSON or plain text

Paths and Path Separators

In general, a path is a string of characters which specifies a unique location in a directory or page hierarchy. For file systems, each level in the hierarchy is a directory. For URLs, each level in the hierarchy is a page. Different sections of the path are separated by a path separator, such as a forward slash (/). These different sections represent the separate directories or pages in the hierarchy, as shown below:

/home/user/python/test.py

In this file path, the test.py file is inside the python directory. The python directory is a subdirectory of the user directory, which is a subdirectory of the home directory. File paths are one example of a path. Paths are also an important component of URLs.

In Unix-based operating systems, such as Linux or macOS, the path separator is a forward slash (/). In Windows, the path separator is a back slash (\).

Note: URLs follow a standard format that always uses a forward slash (/) as the path separator regardless of the operating system.

URLs and File Paths

URLs specify the location where data and websites are hosted on the web. URLs and file paths both function similarly and provide the location a computer must go to to find a particular resource. However, a major difference is that URLs locate resources which are hosted on the Internet, and file paths locate resources which are stored locally or on a local network.

Absolute and Relative File Paths

Absolute file paths specify the location of a file from the root directory in the file system structure. They are also called “full file paths” or “full paths.” Some examples of absolute file paths are:

• /home/user/website/main/about.html
• /home/user/projects/js/script.js
• /home/user/data-analysis/scripts/main.py

In Linux, the tilde (~) is commonly used to represent a user’s home directory in a file path. For example, the above file paths could be changed to:

• ~/website/main/about.html
• ~/projects/js/script.js
• ~/data-analysis/scripts/main.py

Relative file paths specify the location of a file in the same folder or on the same server. In other words, a relative file path specifies a location of a file that is relative to the current directory. Some examples of relative file paths are:

• ./about.html
• ./js/script.js
• ./scripts/main.py

Relative file paths use a dot notation at the start of the path, followed by a path separator and the location of the file. A single dot (.) indicates the current directory, and a double dot (..) indicates the parent directory. For example, in Linux, ./ tells the program to look for the file from the current directory, and ../ tells the program to go up to the parent directory before looking for the file.