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package java.nio.file.attribute;

import java.security.Principal;

A Principal representing an identity used to determine access rights to objects in a file system.

On many platforms and file systems an entity requires appropriate access rights or permissions in order to access objects in a file system. The access rights are generally performed by checking the identity of the entity. For example, on implementations that use Access Control Lists (ACLs) to enforce privilege separation then a file in the file system may have an associated ACL that determines the access rights of identities specified in the ACL.

A UserPrincipal object is an abstract representation of an identity. It has a name that is typically the username or account name that it represents. User principal objects may be obtained using a UserPrincipalLookupService, or returned by FileAttributeView implementations that provide access to identity related attributes. For example, the AclFileAttributeView and PosixFileAttributeView provide access to a file's owner.

Since:1.7
/** * A {@code Principal} representing an identity used to determine access rights * to objects in a file system. * * <p> On many platforms and file systems an entity requires appropriate access * rights or permissions in order to access objects in a file system. The * access rights are generally performed by checking the identity of the entity. * For example, on implementations that use Access Control Lists (ACLs) to * enforce privilege separation then a file in the file system may have an * associated ACL that determines the access rights of identities specified in * the ACL. * * <p> A {@code UserPrincipal} object is an abstract representation of an * identity. It has a {@link #getName() name} that is typically the username or * account name that it represents. User principal objects may be obtained using * a {@link UserPrincipalLookupService}, or returned by {@link * FileAttributeView} implementations that provide access to identity related * attributes. For example, the {@link AclFileAttributeView} and {@link * PosixFileAttributeView} provide access to a file's {@link * PosixFileAttributes#owner owner}. * * @since 1.7 */
public interface UserPrincipal extends Principal { }