Absolute vs relative paths in Linux CLI - Hands-On Comparison

Understanding Absolute vs Relative Paths in Linux CLI

📖 Scenario: You are organizing files in your home directory on a Linux system. You want to practice using absolute and relative paths to navigate and list files.

🎯 Goal: Learn how to use absolute and relative paths to list files in different directories using the ls command.

📋 What You'll Learn

Use absolute paths starting from root /

Use relative paths starting from current directory .

Understand difference between absolute and relative paths

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Knowing absolute and relative paths helps you manage files and folders efficiently on any Linux system.

💼 Career

System administrators, developers, and anyone working with servers or command line need to understand paths to navigate and automate tasks.

1

Create a directory structure

Create a directory called project inside your home directory /home/user and inside project create a directory called docs. Use the mkdir -p /home/user/project/docs command.

Linux CLI

# Your command here to create /home/user/project/docs

Need a hint?

Use mkdir -p to create nested directories in one command.

2

Create a config file

Create an empty file called config.txt inside the docs directory using the absolute path /home/user/project/docs/config.txt. Use the touch command.

Linux CLI

mkdir -p /home/user/project/docs
# Your command here to create /home/user/project/docs/config.txt

Need a hint?

Use touch with the full absolute path to create the file.

3

List files using relative path

Change directory to /home/user/project using cd. Then list the files inside the docs directory using a relative path with ls docs.

Linux CLI

mkdir -p /home/user/project/docs
touch /home/user/project/docs/config.txt
# Your commands here to cd and list files using relative path

Need a hint?

Use cd /home/user/project to move to the project directory, then ls docs to list files inside docs using relative path.

4

List files using absolute path

From any directory, list the files inside /home/user/project/docs using the absolute path with ls /home/user/project/docs.

Linux CLI

mkdir -p /home/user/project/docs
touch /home/user/project/docs/config.txt
cd /home/user/project
ls docs
# Your command here to list files using absolute path

Need a hint?

Use ls /home/user/project/docs to list files with absolute path. The output should show config.txt twice from both ls docs and ls /home/user/project/docs.