Directory structure.

The directory structure of IRIX is similar to DOS. We can create a tree of directories and access them with pathnames. Concept of a path is also same as in DOS except that the 'character in DOS is replaced by '/'. For example a typical path in DOS is given as
usr
bin whereas in IRIX it is given as /usr/bin .

Absolute path: Absolute path to a file or a directory starts with a root directory /. For example the path /usr/include/stdio.h is an absolute path to the file stdio.h because it starts with root directory.

Relative path: Relative path to a file or a directory does not start with root directory but it is relative to the present directory we are in.

For example let us assume that we are already in /usr directory. Now relative path to the file stdio.h in the include directory is include/stdio.h. Notice that in a path if we do not have first character as / then present directory is taken as the starting point.