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Absolute vs Relative Paths

Understand how the shell resolves paths so you never get lost.

A relative path starts from where you are now: cd projects/cli-course.

An absolute path starts from the root: cd /home/you/projects (Linux) or cd /Users/you (macOS).

. means “here” and .. means “parent folder.” You can chain them: cd ../sibling-folder.

Tab completion

Press Tab while typing a path — the shell autocompletes file and folder names. Huge time saver.

$ Commands to try

$ cd ./local-folder
$ cd ../other-folder
$ ls /etc

Practice exercise

Use tab completion to cd into a nested folder without typing the full name.