An absolute path is a path that describes the location of a file or folder regardless of the current working directory; in fact, it is relative to the root directory. It contains the complete location of a file or directory, hence the name. It is also referred to as absolute pathname or full path and it always starts at the same place, which is the root directory. The target file or directory can be referred to from anywhere within that computer system.

Root directory in Windows contains the drive identifier and path to the sub directory or file. An example for an absolute path to the file TMSS10Inventory is:

C:\Program Files\TapeTrack\TapeTrack Server Utilities\bin\tapetrack\TMSS10Inventory

Root directory in Linux starts at the root directory and path to the sub directory or file. An example for an absolute path to the file TMSS10Inventory is:

/bin/TMSS10Inventory

A relative path is a path that describes the location of a file or folder in relative to the current working directory. The target file or directory can only be referred to using a relative path if the start point is in a location where the relative path matches up.

For example starting from within

C:\Program Files\TapeTrack\TapeTrack Server Utilities

the relative path to TMSS10Inventory would be

.\bin\tapetrack\TMSS10Inventory

but if you were in the directory

C:\Program Files\TapeTrack

the same relative path would be referring to the wrong location of

C:\Program Files\TapeTrack\bin\tapetrack\TMSS10Inventory