Paths

The Linux file system is hierarchical which means everything spans from the root (/). This consistent layout keeps everything organised and allows us to become familiar with locations of commonly used files and programs. Additionally, Linux makes use of relative and absolute paths.

Absolute Path
An absolute path stems from the root, this is a fully inclusive path and specifies exactly where something is located.
In this example, I was first in the root and I wanted to change to my home directory, because the path I used started with “/” this constitutes an absolute path.

Relative Path
As the name suggests, these paths are relative to your current directory.

In the first two lines we can see that I’m in the “/home/207SE/bisoft” directory, I know that the directory “TB207SE2019” exists here and can use a relative path to change to it. Relative paths are convenient but can cause security issues.