Having trouble linking to file using relative path

I got this to work by using include_once(plugin_dir_path( __FILE__ ) . '/../tpls/frontend.php');
The file I’m using include_once in is itself included from the index.php file in the plugin’s root directory so, according to the documentation on the subject, a relative path to the file will be relative to the root directory, not the inc folder.
However, in that case I expected to be able to include the file like this: include_once('./tpls/frontend.php'); but after testing it I found it doesn’t work as expected.