Folder hierarchy and file paths

Name:

Date:

Class:

Quick Questions

Shade in the A or B circle for each question.

1. Which is an absolute path on a Windows computer?

A C:\Users\Sam\file.txt

B Sam\file.txt

2. Which is an absolute path on a Linux computer?

A /home/sam/file.txt

B sam/file.txt

3. A relative path is written from...

A The root of the drive

B The current folder

4. You are in /home/sam. Which relative path points to /home/sam/docs/file.txt?

A docs/file.txt

B /docs/file.txt

5. What does .. mean in a relative path such as ../file.txt?

A Go down into a new subfolder

B Go up one folder to the parent

Match the Pairs

Draw a line connecting each item on the left to its match on the right.

Left column		Right column
1C:\Users\Sam\file.txt		AA relative path starts at the current folder, so from inside docs it looks for docs/docs/report.txt, which does not exist.
2/home/sam/file.txt		Bdocs/report.txt
3A relative path locates a file starting from the current folder, not from the root		CThe .. means go up one folder, so the path leads to /home/sam/file.txt, not into the docs folder.
4A network drive path locates a file on another computer using the server name and a shared folder		DAn absolute Windows path starting at the C: drive root and going down through the Users and Sam folders to file.txt
5/home/sam/docs/../file.txt typed as the path to docs/file.txt		EAn absolute Linux path starting at the root / and going through the home and sam folders to file.txt
6Using the relative path docs/report.txt from inside the docs folder		F\\server\shared\file.txt

Definitions

file path

Fill in the Blanks

Complete each line of code by filling in the missing parts.

__\Users\Sam\file.txt

_home/sam/file.txt

__/notes/file.txt

__server\share\file.txt

cd /home/sam cat _/file.txt

Spot the Error

Shade in the letter of the line that contains an error.

Question 1

A cd \home\sam

B ls

C cat file.txt

Question 2

A cd /home/sam

B mkdir school

C cd school

D cat ./file.txt

Question 3

A import os

B base = "/home/sam"

C path = base + "a.txt"

D print(path)

Question 4

A cd C:\Users\Sam

B cd \Documents

C type file.txt

Question 5

A net use Z: \fileserver\share

B cd Z:\reports

C type budget.txt

Answer Key

Folder hierarchy and file paths

Section A: Quick Questions

A — C:\Users\Sam\file.txt

A — /home/sam/file.txt

B — The current folder

A — docs/file.txt

B — Go up one folder to the parent

Section B: Match the Pairs

C:\Users\Sam\file.txt → An absolute Windows path starting at the C: drive root and going down through the Users and Sam folders to file.txt

/home/sam/file.txt → An absolute Linux path starting at the root / and going through the home and sam folders to file.txt

A relative path locates a file starting from the current folder, not from the root → docs/report.txt

A network drive path locates a file on another computer using the server name and a shared folder → \\server\shared\file.txt

/home/sam/docs/../file.txt typed as the path to docs/file.txt → The .. means go up one folder, so the path leads to /home/sam/file.txt, not into the docs folder.

Using the relative path docs/report.txt from inside the docs folder → A relative path starts at the current folder, so from inside docs it looks for docs/docs/report.txt, which does not exist.

Section C: Definitions

file path — The location of a file in the folder tree, written from the root (absolute, e.g. /home/sam/file.txt) or from the current folder (relative).

Section D: Fill in the Blanks

C:\Users\Sam\file.txt

/home/sam/file.txt

../notes/file.txt

\\server\share\file.txt

cd /home/sam
cat ./file.txt

Section E: Spot the Error

A — Linux paths use forward slashes. The absolute path to the folder is /home/sam, not \home\sam.

D — ./ means the current folder (school), but file.txt is in /home/sam. The relative path must use ../ to go up one folder: cat ../file.txt.

C — Without a / separator the result is /home/sama.txt. The folder and file name must be joined with a slash: base + "/a.txt".

B — A leading backslash starts from the root of the drive, so this looks for C:\Documents. A relative path from C:\Users\Sam is just Documents.

A — A Windows network drive path (UNC path) starts with two backslashes: \\fileserver\share. A single backslash is not a network location.