When opening files (Ctrl-O), or automatically updating internal links, relative paths are not handled consistently.
Equivalent:
[[Zettelkasten/003 Reference/202510011323.md]]
[[Zettelkasten\003 Reference\202510011323.md]]
[[202510011323.md]]
If the first is a partial match in the when slashes match the operating system it does suggest a note.
However, when relative path is used outside of Obsidian, the resulting reference works more like a text string than a path to note.
If I were to open (Ctrl-O) on the string 202510011323 it might give me three files to choose from. Depending on the operating system, it would find two of them.
Sometimes it will come back with wikilink strings that don’t exist in the vault. Those might be prefixed with another folder. If clicked, it creates a new empty file.
The empty note becomes a duplicate file name in the overall vault. That is undesired behavior.
If I start taking notes in the empty file, then rename it later, it tends to fix the reference where it is only [[FILENAME.MD]] not the relative path.
There are times it does rewrite the whole path into the filename wikilink, which is desirable.
I have not tried this with markdown links, [FILENAME.MD](PATH/FILENAME.MD) as I don’t tend to create these.
Obsidian Version 1.12.7 Windows 10
Obsidian Version 1.12.7 Ubuntu 24.4+