What do these characters `../` mean?

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1

What I’m trying to do

What do these characters ../ in the display of a link mean? I thought I knew, i.e., that the linked file is in the fleeting notes directory rather than the vault, but that does not seem to be the case.

2

The notation .. signifies the parent directory. In the context of relative paths, a single dot (.) denotes the current directory, whereas a double dot (..) indicates the parent directory.

To illustrate, the markdown code below shows how to embed a file called ‘document.pdf’ from a directory named ‘assets,’ which is situated in the parent directory of the current working directory.

![[../assets/document.pdf]]
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3

This is a bit confusing to me. It answers my question from the perspective of “how to embed a file.” I take it that refers to embedding in a link?

My concern is not “how to” embed a file in a link is what does it mean when a link to a file “has this notation” at the beginning of the link? In particular when some links to files in the same directory have this notation and some do not?

When I initially posted I was mainly curious. Recently, though, I have come to suspect that the presence of this notation in links is the source of a problem that has mystified me for quite a while now.

I am interested in accessing files, including via links in other files, using vim and the wiki.vim plugin. Links with this notation at the beginning do not open the linked file, but instead open a new file without any content. How can I eliminate this notation from all my Obsidian links?

I’m guessing—it’s a wild guess for me—this has something to do with absolute and relative paths. Wild because I barely understand absolute and relative paths. Maybe don’t understand them at all.

4

You are right, it’s about the relative path.

When you use vim, you may not be on the correct path ( which means the obsidian vault path ). You could use the command pwd to check your present working path.

Another way is to change the link to absolute links.

You can drag and drop any files from your native file explorer to have Obsidian import (make a copy of) those files in your vault’s attachment folder and insert them as internal links. Hold Ctrl on Windows/Linux or Option on macOS to create file:/// absolute links to those files instead of importing a copy.

Take care this could make your link only work on your current computer.

5

Embedding was only an example.

../ means up a directory. ./ means this directory. That is a general notation used all over the place, in filesystems, websites, command line, etc.

If you had a path:

/Users/eric/documents/taxes/2025/

And you were currently inside the folder 2025:

../2025/ would mean ./taxes/2025.
../../2025/ would mean ./documents/taxes/2025.
../../../2025/ would mean ./eric/documents/taxes/2025.

./taxes/2025/ indicates a relative path.
taxes/2025/ indicates a relative path. (no . or slash)
/taxes/2025/ would indicate an absolute path because it starts with a slash. That would only work if taxes was in your top root folder.

If you are in the 2025 folder in your command line, and you type:

cd ../ you will move up one directory. And now you will be inside the taxes folder.

If you were in Vim, and your current working directory was /Users/eric/documents/taxes/2025/:

You could open a file in your 2024 taxes folder by doing this in Vim:

:e ../2024/January.md - Which means, go up from 2025 to taxes, then into 2024.

That would open the file /Users/eric/documents/taxes/2024/January.md even though your cwd is still inside 2025. Relative paths.

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6

Thanks for the lesson.

This /Users/eric/documents/taxes/2024/January.md is an absolute path? ../taxes/2024 is a relative path? /taxes/2024 is an absolute path? Simply because it begins with / instead of ../?

8

So, when the ../notation is missing in a link, the path is absolute?

When you use vim, you may not be on the correct path ( which means the obsidian vault path ). You could use the command pwd to check your present working path.

When I do pwd it shows in the working directory to be my vault. In it I have a note with several links, some of which have the ../ notation and some do not. All the linked files are in my vault, i.e., not in a directory in my vault. Could this be because some of the links were original set up in my fleeting notes folder before they were moved to the vault?

Another way is to change the link to absolute links.

You can drag and drop any files from your native file explorer to have Obsidian import (make a copy of) those files in your vault’s attachment folder and insert them as internal links. Hold Ctrl on Windows/Linux or Option on macOS to create file:/// absolute links to those files instead of importing a copy.

My situation is that the ../ notation occurs in existing links. I thought the Link Converter plugin might provide a way to change the path of links in my files, but it appears it can only do that in the context of changing the style of links, wiki or markdown.

Is there a way I could change the paths of all links to files in my vault to absolute?

9

Yes, because / by itself (or at the start of a path) means root. The top folder.

In your filesystem, that means the very top of all your folders.

In Obsidian, it means the root of your vault.

Not necessarily, but if you add the / at the start, then yes it’s absolute. In Obsidian, if you have “shortest when possible” in your links, Obsidian knows to link to something relative, or without mentioning the path at all. But yes, if you put / at the start, you’re telling it that belongs in the top root of your vault.

(I’m not quite sure I’m answering your issue. I’m just answering about the notation, to the best of my ability.)

10

Some software could handle the relative path without ../ while others could not, so different software may have different ways to process the link. Like on Obsidian, you could use [note](Inbox/note.md) to link to a note, but other software may not recognize it.

You mean, if the link has ../ at the beginning of the path, it will only work on obsidian, while without it, the note could work with Vim? Maybe we could just use the find and replace function to remove the ../. You could Regex Find/Replace or the Global Search and Replace plugin to do this.

For example, your vault structure like:
Vault path: /Users/eric/documents

| - Inbox
| - Project
  | - blog
     | - article1
     | - article2

Then you should replace ../blog to /Users/eric/documents/Project/blog.

I’m not sure if this is a good idea.