Forcing an Absolute path where a relative path is expected

Question

I have a program that takes a relative path as input appends it to a some path string to get the actual path.

Now all I can input is the relative path. So if I want to go one level above my input will be ../mypath.

If I know the depth of the path used internally, I can use .. as many times to go to the root directory and then give the absolute path. But suppose I do not know the depth of the directory, can I construct a relative path string such that it considers it as a relative path. One way could be to have enough .. in the path string so that I can force an absolute path for some maximum depth of path.

Is there some path string syntax that I am not aware of but can achieve this?

Answer 1

Perhaps something like this:

s="."; until [[ $(readlink -e $s) == / ]]; do s+=/..; done; echo "$s"; ls -l "$s"

Answer 2

If the program always defaults to the same location, just make a symlink in that directory to / and use that.