An empty path is either an empty absolute path or an empty relative path.

Windows

An absolute path contains the complete address of a file's location within the file hierarchy. An empty absolute path refers to the highest point in the file hierarchy. An empty absolute path in a path control appears as an empty string and when you wire it to a file I/O function, it refers to the list of drives associated with the computer.

A relative path contains the address of a file's location relative to the position of the user within the file hierarchy. An empty relative path refers to the current position of the user within the file hierarchy. This path is represented as a period ..

macOS and Linux

An empty absolute path in a path control appears as a slash / and when you wire it to a file I/O function, the empty path refers to the root directory.

An empty relative path appears as a period . and refers to the current position of the user within the file hierarchy.