Symbolic paths represent common, system paths on a given computer, and can be used as path parts to construct paths in JADE. Essentially all folder and file paths in JADE and its many plugins allow for the use of symbolic paths. Symbolic paths always resolve to folders on a given computer and often depend on computer-specific details such as the primary drive letter. This can be useful when, for example, the drive letter changes on a machine but you wish to continue putting data in a folder on the “Desktop”. Note that we use the terms folder and directory interchangeably here.
Let’s carry that one step further so we can see how to use symbolic paths. Suppose you create the following folder on your desktop: C:\Users\some-user-name\Desktop\MyFolder. We could instead refer to that folder using a symbolic path as: [Desktop]\MyFolder. As noted above, one benefit of the symbolic form is that if your drive letter were to change from C to D, you would not have to update configuration in all places where you had otherwise hard-coded the drive letter.
As an aside, in many cases folder hierarchy will be created for you (ex. a logging path). See plugin specific documentation for details on a case by case basis.
Temporary | TMP | Temp | UserTemp - the user’s temporary directoryLocalAppData | UserAppData - the user’s local application data directoryUserHome - the user’s home directoryUserPrefs | UserPreferences - the user’s preferences directoryUserDocs | UserDocuments - the user’s documents directoryUserDesktop | Desktop - the user’s desktopPublicData | Public | ProgramData - the user’s public data directory (ex. the ProgramData directory in most modern versions of Windows)RootDir | Root | SystemDrive | SysDrive | HomeDrive | RootDrive | SystemRoot - the system primary drive (ex. C:\ on most Windows systems).. | UpOneLevel | UpOneDir | UpLevel | UpDir - moves up one level in the directory path. For example, C:\MyFolder\OtherFolder\..\SomeFolder is equivalent to C:\MyFolder\SomeFolder.