An absolute path or full path is a unique location of a file or directory name within a computer or filesystem, and usually starts with the root directory or drive letter. Directories and subdirectories listed in a path are usually separated by a slash (/).
Example: /Users/Matt/www/blog/images/icecream.jpg
To find the absolute filesystem path of the directory containing a web page, copy the code below into a new text file, save the file as path.php (thus making a simple PHP web page), and move that file to your web server. Then direct your web browser to the URL address of that file (e.g. http://www.example.com/path.php).
The term ‘slug’ comes from the world of newspaper production.
It’s an informal name given to a story during the production process. As the story winds its path from the beat reporter (assuming these even exist any more?) through to editor through to the “printing presses”, this is the name it is referenced by, e.g., “Have you fixed those errors in the ‘kate-and-william’ story?”.
Some applications (such as Django) use the slug as part of the URL to locate the story, an example being www.mysite.com/archives/kate-and-william.
It may even date back earlier than that since screenplays had “slug lines” at the start of each scene, which basically sets the background for that scene (where, when, and so on). It’s very similar in that it’s a precis or preamble of what follows.
On a Linotype machine, a slug was a single line piece of metal which was created from the individual letter forms. By making a single slug for the whole line, this greatly improved on the old character-by-character compositing.