Path (computing) - Representations of Paths By Operating System and Shell

Representations of Paths By Operating System and Shell

Operating System Shell Root Directory Directory Separator Current Directory Parent Directory Home Directory Examples
Unix-like OS Unix shell / / . .. ~ /home/user/docs/Letter.txt
./inthisdir
../../greatgrandparent
~/.rcinfo
DOS COMMAND.COM \ or
\\\		 / or \ (note: command.com does not treat / as a directory separator) . .. C:\USER\DOCS\LETTER.TXT
A:PICTURE.JPG
\\SERVER01\USER\DOCS\LETTER.TXT
OS/2 cmd.exe \ / or \ . .. C:\user\docs\Letter.txt

A:Picture.jpg
Microsoft Windows cmd.exe / or
\ or
\\\
note: for CD command, / treated as relative path (same as .\)		 / or \ (note: for CD command, / treated as relative path (same as .\)) . .. C:\user\docs\Letter.txt
A:Picture.jpg
\\Server01\user\docs\Letter.txt
Microsoft Windows Windows PowerShell / or \or
\\\ or

\

 / or \ . .. C:\user\docs\Letter.txt
\\Server01\user\docs\Letter.txt

UserDocs:/Letter.txt
Variable:PSVersionTable
Registry::HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\
Microsoft.PowerShell.Security\Certificate::CurrentUser\
TOPS-20 DCL . PS:LETTER.TXT,4
RSX-11 DCL DR0:LETTER.TXT;4
OpenVMS DCL or

]:::

 . SYS$SYSDEVICE:PHOTO.JPG

GEIN::LETTER.TXT;4
Classic Mac OS : : : :: Macintosh HD:Documents:Letter
:fileincurrentdir
::fileinparent
:::fileingrandparent
ProDOS AppleSoft BASIC // / /SCHOOL.DISK/APPLEWORKS/MY.REPORT

FLIGHT.SIMULATOR,D2
AmigaOS Amiga CLI / AmigaShell : / . / Workbench:Utilities/MultiView
DF0:S/Startup-Sequence
S:Startup-Sequence
TCP:en.wikipedia.com/80
RISC OS Task window :]$

note: &, % and @ can also be used to reference the root of the current user, the library and the current (working) directory respectively.

 . @ ^ & ADFS::MyDrive.$.Documents.Letter
Net#MainServer::DataDrive.$.Main.sy10823
LanMan::WindowsC.$.Pictures.Japan/gif
NFS:&.!Choices
ADFS:%.IfThere
@.inthisdir
^.^.greatgrandparent


When filesystems with filename extensions are mounted, '.' characters are changed to '/', as in the Japan/gif example above.
Symbian OS File manager \ \ \user\docs\Letter.txt
Domain/OS Shell // /
MenuetOS CMD / /
Stratus VOS VOS command-line interpreter %#> > <
NonStop Kernel TACL Tandem Advanced Command Language No root . No parent directory \NODE.$DISK.SUBVOL.FILE

\NODE.$DEVICE

\NODE.$DEVICE.#SUBDEV.QUALIFIER
CP/M CCP no subdirectories no subdirectories no parent no subdirectories A:LETTER.TXT

Japanese and Korean versions of Windows may often display the '¥' character or the '₩' character instead of the directory separator. In such cases the code for a backslash is being drawn as these characters. Very early versions of MS-DOS replaced the backslash with these glyphs on the display to make it possible to display them by programs that only understood 7-bit ASCII (other characters such as the square brackets were replaced as well, see ISO 646, Windows Codepage 932 (Japanese Shift JIS), and Codepage 949 (Korean)). Although even the first version of Windows supported the 8-bit ISO-8859-1 character set which has the Yen sign at U+00A5, and modern versions of Windows supports Unicode which has the Won sign at U+20A9, much software will continue to display backslashes found in ASCII files this way to preserve backwards compatibility.

Mac OS X, as a derivative of UNIX, uses UNIX paths internally. However, to preserve compatibility for software and familiarity for users, many portions of the GUI switch "/" typed by the user to ":" internally, and switch them back when displaying filenames (a ":" entered by the user is also changed into "/" but the inverse translation does not happen).

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