Summary: Relative paths Example: relative_paths = 0

This options controls whether relative paths are given priority or not. Due to historical reasons (or a design flaw, if you will), a relative path given to FS-UAE can resolve as both a traditional path relative to the current directory, but also as a path relative to for example the hard drives directory.

This causes a conflict if you've specified the name of a hard drive in the "Hard Drives" directory, which also exists relative to the current directory, and you want to use the former.

Setting this option to 0 allows you to give priority to the directory in "Hard Drives".

This option got very relevant recently, since OS X now uses / as current directory when you launch an .app. Since there is a "System" directory, this will block the use of "System" as a reference to a directory in "Hard Drives", unless you use this option.