Should I provide file name with or without drive letter?

When provide a file name, you have choice of providing or not providing the drive letter:

1. If you provide a file name with the drive letter, the system will go to the given disk drive to locate the file.

Providing the drive letter is a good practice for Windows system files or installed program files. Because those files are usually installed on the default disk drive C.

For example: "C:\windows\System32\cmd.exe" has the drive letter provided. The system will go to disk drive C to find the file.

Another advantage of providing the drive letter to reduce the risk of running malicious programs.

For example, if you use \windows\System32\cmd.exe and expect to run Windows command line prompt. But you are currently in a USB drive E and it has malicious program in the same location. The malicious program will be executed.

2. If you provide a file name without the drive letter, the system will go to the current disk drive to locate the file.

Not providing the drive letter is a good practice for reading or writing data files. This allows you to run the same commands or scripts on any disk drive.

For example, running "ping google.com >> \temp\google.log" command will work from any disk drive, as long as the \temp directory exists.

⇒ File Name with Relative Path or Absolute Path

⇐ What Is File Name

⇑ File Name and File Path

⇑⇑ Windows Batch File Tutorials