What does “./” (dot slash) refer to in terms of an HTML file path location?

Question

I know ../ means go up a path, but what does ./ mean exactly?

I was recently going through a tutorial and it seems to be referring to just

Answer 1

/ means the root of the current drive;

./ means the current directory;

../ means the parent of the current directory.

Answer 2

In reference to the quick reference list, specifically you can use the following :

\.\ Root Directory + Current directory (Drive Letter)

Answer 3

Yes, ./ means the current working directory. You can just reference the file directly by name, without it.

Answer 4

You are correct that you can omit it. It's useful only for clarity. There is no functional difference between it being there and not being there.

Answer 5

./ is the the folder that the working file is in:

So in /index.htm ./ is the root directory
but in /css/style.css ./ is the css folder.

This is important to remember because if you move CSS from /index.htm to /css/style.css the path will change.

Answer 6

A fast and small recap about paths

Absolute paths

http://website.com/assets/image.jpg
IF the image is not on your domain - go look there for image

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//website.com/assets/image.jpg
image loaded using http or https protocols

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Relative paths

(For internal use if the image is on the same server)

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image.jpg
image in the same place as the document calling the image!

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./image.jpg
Same as above, image in the same place as the document calling the image!

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/assets/image.jpg
Similar to Absolute Paths, just omitting the protocol and domain name
Go search my image starting from my root folder /, than into assets/

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assets/image.jpg
this time assets is in the same place as the document, so go into assets for the image

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../assets/image.jpg
From where the document is, go one folder back ../ and go into assets

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../../image.jpg
go two folders back, there's my image!

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../../assets/image.jpg
go two folders back ../../ and than go into assets