A
path, the general form of the
name of a
file or
directory, specifies a unique location in a
file system. A path points to a file system location by following the directory tree hierarchy expressed in a
string of
characters in which path components, separated by a delimiting character, represent each directory. The delimiting character is most commonly the
slash ("/"), the
backslash character ("\"), or colon (":"), though some
operating systems may use a different
delimiter. 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 Locators (URLs). Resources can be represented by either
absolute or
relative paths.