what is canonical path?

From: Ben Wan (bwan0425_at_rogers.com)
Date: 10/05/03 

Date: Sun, 05 Oct 2003 16:58:08 GMT

Can anyone please tell me what is canonical path? and why does it need to throws IOexception?
how come getAbsolutePath() doesn't return "c:\folder\folder" but getCanonicalPath() does?
things I tried using java.io.File
file.getName(); // return "."
file.getAbsolutePath(); // return "."
file.getCanonicalPath(); // return "c:\folder\folder"

Thank You Very Much!

Ben