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Difference Between Absolute And Relative Path with Definition & Table

We express the difference between the absolute and relative paths. Online platforms are a rising forum for all businesses today. Links or hyperlinks are essential for all such websites on the World Wide Web. These links that can be organized on a word or a symbol allow us to jump from one place to another on the Internet. These links are of two types, Absolute and Relative, the differences of which are based on the location path they describe and how.

The difference is that an absolute path specifies the location from the root directory, while the relative path is related to the current directory.

Another visible difference between the two ways is that an absolute way begins with a delimiting character like “/” whereas a relative way never begins with such characters. In an absolute path, the forward delimiter character is filtered to the required location. However, using a relative path is only feasible when moving in the same directory. An absolute path is used when a link navigates to content on another website, and a relative path is used when linking to something on the same website.

Comparison Table

Comparison parameter

By definition	specifies the location of the root directory	related to the current directory location
Delimiter character function	Starts with a delimiter character	Never starts with a delimiting character
Navigate to	Content from other domains	Same domain content
URL used	Use absolute URL	Relative URL used
Other names	Full path or file path	Path not absolute

What is the Absolute Path?

An absolute path or a full path is the path to a location on an operating system or on the Internet. The specialty of this path is that it starts from the root directory and leads to the locations. A complete route always includes a detailed map of the location. These routes are used to navigate from one website to another using hyperlink that links content on another domain.

For such navigations in domains of another website, an absolute path uses an absolute URL. These URLs are detailed and specific indicating a particular location.

However, their delimiting characters differ depending on the operating system used. There are also several characters that are involved in the absolute path that have different meanings in computer language.

Since a single “/” or “” means directory separator, a single period “.” represents the current directory, and the double dot or “..” represents the main directory.

Also, these jargons vary from country to country, for example, a Korean or Japanese directory may use ¥ or ₩ as a directory separator instead of the standard “/” or “”. An absolute path that always includes the root directory, most of the time, begins with “/” or “” indicating the main file.

What is the relative path?

A relative path is a set of information that leads to a location relative to the current directory. These routes use a relative URL to navigate between the links. A relative path can only be used to navigate within a particular domain and does not allow jumping from one website to another when using a relative URL on the internet

These pathways are also the culmination of similar characters used by an absolute pathway. However, a relative path does not include the root directory and therefore does not start with the backslash or forward slash. A relative path is also called a non-absolute path or a partial path. These types of paths are particularly useful for web developers as they are short and take less time to write while writing long code for programmers.

Similarly, relative paths are part of the absolute path denoting a certain location under the same directory when used on operating systems such as Linux Windows.

A relative path generally begins with “..” representing the parent directory and is then filtered to the specific location. However, they are much shorter than a full track.

Key Differences

The main difference between an absolute and a relative path is that an absolute path specifies the location from the root directory, while the relative path is related to the current directory.
Another visible difference between the two ways is that an absolute way begins with a delimiting character like “/” while a relative way begins with characters like “..” but never “/” or “”.
An absolute path is used when a link navigates to content on another website, and a relative path is used when linking to something on the same website.
An absolute path is also called a full path, while a relative path is also called a non-absolute path or a partial path.
An absolute path uses an absolute URL to navigate to pages that are beyond a single domain, while a relative path uses a relative URL that navigates to pages only in the same domain.

Final Thought

These two avenues are widely used by programmers to link and hyperlink pages on and off websites. And, therefore, they play a fundamental role in content linking and web page development.

However, there are significant differences between the two routes that make them very useful separately.

The main is that an absolute path specifies the location of the root directory and contains detailed information, while the relative path is related to the current directory and carries only a part of the absolute path.

Another key difference between the two paths is that an absolute path begins with a delimiting character such as the directory separator “/” or “” while a relative path begins with characters such as “..” but never “/” or “”.

An absolute path is used to link content from another website and a relative path is used to link something on the same website. A relative path is part of the absolute path and helps developers to write extensive code for web pages.