Absolute and Relative Paths

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Absolute Path

An absolute path contains all the information necessary to locate a file. The absolute path has the following format:

LocalDrive:\Path\FileName

where LocalDriveis the drive on which the file is located, Path is the sequence of directories leading to the file, and FileName is the full name of the file, including the extension.

Relative Path

A relative path locates a file using an absolute path as a starting point. In effect, the complete path of the file is specified by concatenating the absolute and relative paths. A relative path typically consists only of the path and the file name, but not the drive.