Partial and Full URL's

You can (and should) access related documents on the same server with partial URL's.

To make a partial URL: leave off the protocol, domain, and port, and then, if you wish to access a document in:

the same directory
use just the filename
a lower directory
use the directory name, with no initial /, followed by the filename
in any other directory
use the entire path from the document root, with an initial /.

Consider the following directory tree: 
/
my-tree/
  directory-1/
    document-1a
    document-1b
    directory-11/
	document-11a
      
  directory-2/
    document-2a
    document-2b

  directory-3/
     this-page
      document-3a
      directory-31/
          document-31a
	  document-31b
<--the Document Root directory
So within the document called this-page, the following partial URL's will work

<a href="document-3a">item 3a</a>
(same directory)

<a href="directory-31/document-31b">item 31b</a>
sub-directory to the current

<a href="/my-tree/directory-2/document-2a">item 2a</a>
non sub-directories must be declared from the document root. They will start with a '/'. (You can't depend on Unix's '../' function working on every server, I think.)
You should not mention the protocol or domain in partial URL's.

Partial URL's are much easier to maintain than full URL's -- when you need to move a set of related documents, you can move the whole directory tree, and you don't have to change any links.

Last modified: Wed Mar 27 14:12:21 MST 1996