Linux Server Management

Relative Path

A relative path is a relative path starting from current directory. The word path contains both the file name and the directory name.

# Relative path
foo
foo/bar
foo/bar/baz

foo.txt
foo/bar.pl
foo/bar/baz.tar.gz

Linux recognizes paths that do not start with "/" as relative paths. Note that unlike absolute path, it does not start with a "/".

Sample using relative path

Use relative path with cd command

This is a sample that uses a relative path in the cd command.

cd foo/bar

If the current directory is "/home/kimoto", change the current directory to "/home/kimoto/foo/bar".

If the current directory is "/home/kimoto/labo", change the current directory to "/home/kimoto/labo/foo/bar".

Notice that the relative path is relative to the current directory.

Use relative path with ls command

This is a sample that uses a relative path in the ls command.

ls foo/bar

If the current directory is "/home/kimoto", a list of files existing in "/home/kimoto/foo/bar" will be displayed.

If the current directory is "/home/kimoto/labo", a list of files existing in "/home/kimoto/labo/foo/bar" will be displayed.

Use relative paths in other commands

touch command, mkdir command, rmdir command and rm command, can use relative paths.

touch foo/bar
mkdir foo/bar
rmdir foo/bar
rm foo/bar

All Linux commands are designed to recognize relative paths.