I recently was watching a php video tutorial and the author was showing how to do include a file. He was using XAMPP for the demonstrations and had many files.
When he was showing how to include a file, he mentioned something about putting two dots (..) in front of the file path (/xampp/content/example.html) because of something having to do with where the files were located, assuming that I already had knowledge of this principle. But i don't.
Can anyone explain what is up with having one dot or two dots in front of file paths?
What is the difference between include("/xampp/content/example.html");, include("./xampp/content/example.html");, and include("../xampp/content/example.html");
2 Answers
In Linux / Unix environment,
/xampp/content/example.html means absolute path
./xampp/content/example.html means relative path of current directory
../xampp/content/example.html means relative path of parent directory
For the folder structure: /var/www/xampp/content/example3.html:
If your current folder is /var/www/...
../(goes up 1 level) will be/var/./(in current level) will be/var/www//will be/(in Linux,/means the root of the server, the outermost structure of the filesystem)../../(goes up 2 level) will be/
There are 2 types of paths: Relative Path & Absolute Path.
For Relative path, it's relative to your current directory. For absolute path, it's not related to your current directory.
