Welcome back. Let's take a quick moment to think back on what you've already accomplished in this course. In the previous module, you discovered how to install Python and set up your own programming environment. Then, you learned how to write and execute Python scripts locally. We then discussed when to consider automating, and what problems we might encounter when doing that. To finish up, you were introduced the Qwiklabs, the platform that will help you keep growing your skills throughout this course. Wow. You should be impressed of yourself, and I hope you're as excited as I am for what's coming up next. Over the next few videos, we'll check out some ways you can use Python to interact with file systems. As an IT specialist, it's likely that you'll need to manipulate files and directories on a computer a lot. When you need to work on a large number of files and directories, that's when automation can be a huge help. As a sysadmin, in my job, I interact with files and directories all the time, sometimes even if I have no intention of modifying them. For example, I use Python to check if a certain file exists on the file system before doing any other operations. As you might remember, operating systems like Mac OS, Windows, and Linux use file systems to organize and control how data is stored and access. Data is usually stored on a disk and saved in files which are held in containers called directories or folders. File systems are usually organized in a tree structure with directories and files nested under their parents. We know where a resource like a directory or a file is located within that tree structure by its path. An absolute path is a full path to the resource in the file system. For example, on a Windows computer, the absolute path to the folder for the user Jordan would be C:\Users\Jordan. On a Linux computer, the absolute path to the equivalent directory would be /home/jordan. We call it absolute path because it doesn't matter where in the file system our script is running, the absolute path will always lead us to the resource. On the flip side, relative paths use only a portion of a path to show where the resource is located in relation to the current working directory. Relative paths are a shortcut that you can use so you don't have to write out the full file path. But keep in mind, they only makes sense relative to the current location. So for example, if we list the contents of the directory examples, we'll get different outputs depending on what the current directory is. If our current directory is /home/jordan, we'll get the contents of /home/jordan/examples. But if the current directory is /user/share/doc/python3, we'll get the contents of /user/share/doc/python3/examples. In the upcoming videos, we'll do a rundown of the many things that we can do with Python to manipulate files and directories. We'll also look at specific file format called CSV that we'll use to read and write data. So we've got lots of good stuff ahead. Let's get to it.