Understanding java.nio.file.Path.relativize(Path other)

First of all, the current working directory is completely irrelevant. I could reproduce your problem even under Windows, not having any of these files and directories on my system, the only difference being the use of \\ instead of /.

What should relativize do? If you have a path like foo bar baz and ask for relativizing foo bar hello, you’ll get .. hello as that’s the path, relative to foo bar baz to get to foo bar hello, i.e Paths.get("foo", "bar", "baz").resolve(Paths.get("..", "hello")).normalize() produces the same path as Paths.get("foo", "bar", "hello"), regardless of any real file system structure.

Now you ran into the bug JDK-6925169, as suggested by the user Berger in a comment. The Path implementation does not handle . and .. components correctly in relativize, but treats them like any other path component.

So whether you use Paths.get("..", "..", "temp", "delete", "dictionary.txt") or Paths.get("a", "b", "c", "d", "e"), it makes no difference, in either case, the implementation treats it as five nonmatching path components that have to be removed to resolve to Paths.get("zoo.txt"). This applies to both, Windows and Linux. You may verify it with the following platform-independent code:

Path relative = Paths.get("zoo.txt");
Path base1 = Paths.get("..", "..", "temp", "delete", "dictionary.txt");
Path base2 = Paths.get("a",  "b",  "c",    "d",      "e");

Path relativized1 = base1.relativize(relative);
System.out.println("relativized1: "+relativized1);
Path relativized2 = base2.relativize(relative);
System.out.println("relativized2: "+relativized2);

Path resolved1 = base1.resolve(relativized1).normalize();
System.out.println("resolved1="+resolved1);
Path resolved2 = base2.resolve(relativized2).normalize();
System.out.println("resolved2="+resolved2);

Since relatize incorrectly treats all component the same, the relativized paths are the same, but since the normalize operation does handle the .. path components, the first resolved path will exhibit the problem whereas the second resolves to the expected zoo.txt.

It might be important for the understanding, that all path components, including dictionary.txt, are treated like directories. The documentation of relativize doesn’t mention that explicitly, but you can derive it from the documented relationship to resolve, whose documentation says “… this method considers this path to be a directory”.

We want to get from zoo.txt to elephant.bin in this example. So let's start at zoo.txt and ask ourselves how do I get from zoo.txt to elephant.bin. First I have to go up a directory so I use ".." Now I'm in temp. Trace the steps with you finger if it helps! I have to go up one more to java so I use ".." again. Now I'm in java. The file bin is in java so I go down to it using "/bin". Once more I go down using "/elephant.bin". We have arrived at our destination.

Path p1 = Paths.get("java/temp/zoo.txt");
Path p2 = Paths.get("java/bin/elephant.bin");

Path p1Top2 = p1.relativize(p2);
System.out.println(p1Top2); 

Put all of the above steps we took together and you get the output

../../bin/elephant.bin