How can the concept of absolute and relative path referencing be applied in PHP development?

When working with file paths in PHP, it's important to understand the difference between absolute and relative paths. Absolute paths start from the root directory of the file system, while relative paths are based on the current directory. To ensure consistent referencing of files, it's best practice to use absolute paths when referencing files within your PHP code.

// Using absolute path referencing in PHP
$file = '/var/www/html/myfile.txt';
$contents = file_get_contents($file);
echo $contents;