path.resolve()

path.resolve([from ...], to)

Resolves to to an absolute path.

If to isn't already absolute from arguments are prepended in right to left order, until an absolute path is found. If after using all from paths still no absolute path is found, the current working directory is used as well. The resulting path is normalized, and trailing slashes are removed unless the path gets resolved to the root directory. Non-string from arguments are ignored.

Another way to think of it is as a sequence of cd commands in a shell.

path.resolve('foo/bar', '/tmp/file/', '..', 'a/../subfile')

Is similar to:

cd foo/bar
cd /tmp/file/
cd ..
cd a/../subfile
pwd

The difference is that the different paths don't need to exist and may also be files.

Examples:

path.resolve('/foo/bar', './baz')
// returns '/foo/bar/baz'

path.resolve('/foo/bar', '/tmp/file/')
// returns '/tmp/file'

path.resolve('wwwroot', 'static_files/png/', '../gif/image.gif')
// if currently in /home/myself/node, it returns
// '/home/myself/node/wwwroot/static_files/gif/image.gif'

Note: If the arguments to resolve have zero-length strings then the current working directory will be used instead of them.