Relative Path - Totally Confusing

[Sandeep Vaid]

Which of the following holds true always ?

Relative paths are of 2 types :
A) Starting with a / -> This means that it is relative to the content_root of the web applciation.
Example :

res.sendRedirect("/html/index.html);
It will be interpreted as :

<context_root>/html/index.html

B) Starting without a / -> In this case it is relative to the request URL.
Please let me know with example what how do we know the request URL.
res.sendRedirect("html/index.html);

Does these above 2 holds true in every case ?

How about in doGet():

File f = new File("ABC.jar");

as the path doesn't starts with a /, it should be B) senario of Relative path so it should be converted to
<request URL>/ABC.jar
but ALAS it doesn;t.

Moreover what is the absolute path?

I request you to provide me with as many different examples as you can.
This doubt of mine is really not getting resolved from any resource...

[Tridib Samanta]

The relative path concept varies from context to context.

Whenever you are talking about File, the path is relative to the current directory from where you are running the web-server. Like, if you run the tomcat from c:\tomcat\bin and try to use new File("abc.jar"), you must place the "abc.jar" file in "c:\tomcat\bin".

But, in case of any response.sendRidirect(), the relative path is as you specified.