Editing Path (computing) (section)

{{Short description|Text that specifies a file system item in a directory structure}}
{{For|the environment variable|PATH (variable)}}
{{More citations needed|date=July 2008}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2020}}
A '''path''' (or '''filepath''', '''file path''', '''pathname''', or similar) is a [[string (computer science)|text string]] that uniquely specifies an item in a [[hierarchical file system]]. Generally, a path is composed of directory names, special directory specifiers and optionally a [[filename]], separated by [[delimiter|delimiting text]]. The delimiter varies by operating system and in theory can be anything, but popular, modern systems use [[slash (punctuation)|slash]] {{code|/}}, [[backslash]] {{code|\}}, or colon {{code|:}}. 

A path can be either relative or absolute. A relative path includes information that is relative to a particular directory whereas an absolute path indicates a location relative to the system [[root directory]], and therefore, does not depends on context like a relative path does. Often, a relative path is relative to the [[working directory]]. For example, in command {{code|ls f}}, {{code|f}} is a relative path to the file with that name in the working directory.

Paths are used extensively in [[computer science]] to represent the directory/file relationships common in modern operating systems and are essential in the construction of [[Uniform resource locator|uniform resource locators]] (URLs).