There are basically two ways to reference the current folder in a Node.js script:

• ./
• __dirname

Along with ./, there is ../, which points to the parent folder. They behave in the same way.

There is a big difference between the two.

Using __dirname in a Node script will return the path of the folder where the current JavaScript file resides.

Using ./ will give you the current working directory. It will return the same result as calling process.cwd().

Initially the current working directory is the path of the folder where you ran the node command, but that can be changed during the execution of your script, by using the process.chdir() API.

The only place where ./ refers to the current file’s directory is inside a require() call. There, ./ is resolved relative to the file that contains the require().

Lessons in this unit:

0:	Introduction
1:	How to check if a file exists in Node.js
2:	How to create an empty file in Node.js
3:	How to get the names of all the files in a folder in Node
4:	How to get the last updated date of a file using Node.js
5:	How to remove a file with Node.js
6:	How to write a JSON object to file in Node.js
7:	How to empty a folder in Node.js
8:	Working with file descriptors in Node
9:	Node File Paths
10:	Node file stats
11:	Working with folders in Node
12:	How to use the Node.js fs module with async/await
13:	▶︎ How to get the current folder in Node
14:	How to get the file extension in Node.js from the MIME type
15:	How to get the file extension in Node.js
16:	How to list files in a folder in Node
17:	How to mass rename files in Node.js
18:	Node.js get all files in a folder recursively
19:	Incrementing multiple folders numbers at once using Node.js
20:	Save some text to a file in Node.js