No such file or directory when copying files to current directory

Question

I am trying to copy a file from inside a bunch of folders to the current directory I am in. Playing around with the terminal, I see that when I specify the entire location it works:

joostin@ubuntu:~$ cp ~/unixstuff/vol/examples/tutorial/science.txt .

But when I go into the unixstuff folder and try to bring it into the current directly I get an error. Any idea what is going on?

joostin@ubuntu:~$ cd unixstuff
joostin@ubuntu:~/unixstuff$ cp /vol/examples/tutorial/science.txt .
cp: cannot stat ‘/vol/examples/tutorial/science.txt’: No such file or directory

Solution

There is no such directory /vol, but it is vol (without slash), so try just

 cp vol/examples/tutorial/science.txt .