Getting absolute path of a file

Use realpath().

The realpath() function shall derive, from the pathname pointed to by file_name, an absolute pathname that names the same file, whose resolution does not involve '.', '..', or symbolic links. The generated pathname shall be stored as a null-terminated string, up to a maximum of {PATH_MAX} bytes, in the buffer pointed to by resolved_name.

If resolved_name is a null pointer, the behavior of realpath() is implementation-defined.

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The following example generates an absolute pathname for the file identified by the symlinkpath argument. The generated pathname is stored in the actualpath array.

#include <stdlib.h>
...
char *symlinkpath = "/tmp/symlink/file";
char actualpath [PATH_MAX+1];
char *ptr;


ptr = realpath(symlinkpath, actualpath);

Try realpath() in stdlib.h

char filename[] = "../../../../data/000000.jpg";
char* path = realpath(filename, NULL);
if(path == NULL){
    printf("cannot find file with name[%s]\n", filename);
} else{
    printf("path[%s]\n", path);
    free(path);
}

There is also a small path library cwalk which works cross-platform. It has cwk_path_get_absolute to do that:

#include <cwalk.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stddef.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
  char buffer[FILENAME_MAX];

  cwk_path_get_absolute("/hello/there", "./world", buffer, sizeof(buffer));
  printf("The absolute path is: %s", buffer);

  return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

Outputs:

The absolute path is: /hello/there/world