The whole path is used because the files directory is not necessarily a subdirectory of drupal. There are good reasons, both for security and convenience of storage, why one would store private files outsite of any directory served by the web server. Say my drupal is installed in /var/www/drupal; my files might be in /var/private_files/... Many of us have bumped into the various limitations of drupal's file handling, and many modules have attempted to improve the situation. I just want to say that in solving the usability problem discussed on this thread, let's not lose the ability to have private files (or even public) stored outside of where Drupal is installed. -Dave On Sun, 9 Dec 2007 09:54:23 -0600, "Michelle Cox" <mcox@charter.net> said:
I've been wondering about this myself since I got bit by it in 4.7. I never understood why the whole path is stuck in there. Makes it a real PITA to move the files directory.