To change from PERSONAL back to WORDPROC, you can use the special symbol . . (two periods) or you can use an absolute pathname. (The . . symbol always designates the parent directory, which is the level above the current directory.) In other words, you can type:

CD . .

or

CD \WORDPROCUsing Pathnames

A pathname tells MS-DOS how to find its way to the directory you want to access. There are two types of pathnames: relative and absolute. A relative pathname tells MS-DOS how to find its way to the desired directory from the current default directory. An absolute pathname tells MS-DOS how to find its way to the desired directory from the root directory.

Here is an example of an absolute pathname:

\WORDPROC\PERSONAL

The backslash at the beginning of this pathname tells MS-DOS to start its search at the root directory, proceed down the directory tree to WORDPROC, then continue down the tree to PERSONAL.

Here is an example of a relative pathname:

SALES

Because this pathname does not begin with a backslash, MS-DOS assumes that the starting point of the path is the current, default directory. This pathname thus tells MS-DOS to find a directory named SALES that is a subdirectory in the current, default directory. Using the example above, you would have to be logged onto the SPDSHEET directory for this pathname to be valid.

3-18 Using MS-DOS With Your Computer