Service-provider class for file systems. The methods defined by the java.nio.file.Files
class will typically delegate to an instance of this
class.
A file system provider is a concrete implementation of this class that
implements the abstract methods defined by this class. A provider is
identified by a URI
scheme
. The default provider
is identified by the URI scheme "file". It creates the FileSystem
that
provides access to the file systems accessible to the Java virtual machine.
The FileSystems
class defines how file system providers are located
and loaded. The default provider is typically a system-default provider but
may be overridden if the system property
java.nio.file.spi.DefaultFileSystemProvider
is set. In that case, the
provider has a one argument constructor whose formal parameter type is
FileSystemProvider
. All other providers have a zero argument constructor
that initializes the provider.
A provider is a factory for one or more FileSystem
instances. Each
file system is identified by a URI
where the URI's scheme matches
the provider's scheme
. The default file system, for example,
is identified by the URI "file:///"
. A memory-based file system,
for example, may be identified by a URI such as "memory:///?name=logfs"
.
The newFileSystem
method may be used to create a file
system, and the getFileSystem
method may be used to
obtain a reference to an existing file system created by the provider. Where
a provider is the factory for a single file system then it is provider dependent
if the file system is created when the provider is initialized, or later when
the newFileSystem
method is invoked. In the case of the default
provider, the FileSystem
is created when the provider is initialized.
All of the methods in this class are safe for use by multiple concurrent threads.