<A HREF> tag. Thus if any piece of the URL is missing, it
is assumed to be the same as that of the document in which the
URL is found. Such a URL is called a relative URL. In contrast,
a completely specified URL is called an absolute URL. For
example, suppose while browsing
http://metalab.unc.edu/javafaq/books.html you click
on this hyperlink:
<a href="javafaq.html">the FAQ</A>
books.html off the end of
http://metalab.unc.edu/javafaq/books.html
to get
http://metalab.unc.edu/javafaq/
Then it attaches javafaq.html onto the end of http://metalab.unc.edu/javafaq/ to get
http://metalab.unc.edu/javafaq/javafaq.html
If the relative link begins with a /,
then it is relative to the document root instead of
relative to the current file. Thus if while browsing http://metalab.unc.edu/javafaq/books.html you clicked on this hyperlink:
<a href="/boutell/faq/www_faq.html">
/javafaq/javafaq.html and attach /boutell/faq/www_faq.html to the end of
http://metalab.unc.edu to get http://metalab.unc.edu/boutell/faq/www_faq.html. Relative URLs have a number of advantages. First and least they save a little typing. More importantly relative URLs allow entire trees of HTML documents to be moved or copied from one site to another without breaking all the internal links.