In order for the computer (or you) to know where a file or folder is on your computer, you need to know (or be able to find) its file path. The file path describes how to get to the location you're looking at or referring to by listing which folders you need to open to get to it. The first location on a file path is the drive that the file is stored on. From there, each item is the next folder you need to open up to get one step closer to the file. In most cases, though, the file path doesn't list a few folders at the beginning of the actual path. Instead, the path starts with the "user" folder, which contains all of the files that you (the user) normally have access to. If you spend some time "wandering" through your computer's file structure, you will eventually figure out where certain files are and how the file hierarchy on your computer is structured. The following examples are from my computer, but your computer probably is almost the same as mine.
Examples
The complete file path of my desktop:
Macintosh HD/Users/Sam/Desktop
Normally, though, it is listed as
/Users/Sam/Desktop
If I wanted to really shorten the path, the tilde ~ stands for everything up to and including my user folder:
~/Desktop
All three of those paths point to the same location.
A file on my desktop might look like
/Users/Sam/Desktop/plaintext.txt
Try to find the file path to your desktop and to your Documents (or My Documents) folder.
Up Next: Navigating Your Computer: Part 3 (final part)
