java.nio.file: Where is the Path interface actually implemented?
java, java-7, java.nio.file
Solution
If you look carefully you will notice that the method `getPath` from `FileSystem` object returns implementation of Path interface. By invoking `FileSystems.getDefault()` you will retrieve implementation of `FileSystem` interface which will depend on system. On Linux system you will get `LinuxFileSystem` object witch extends `UnixFileSystem` class.
You can look for example at `UnixFileSystem` class from openjdk which is implementation of `FileSystem` interface.
Here is the link with implementation of `getPath` method from UnixFileSystem, which will return instance of UnixPath.
You must remember that `FileSystems.getDefault` return implementation dependent on the operating system. Furthermore source code of those classes isn't available in oracle jdk.
Problem
Recently I was doing some coding using the java.nio.file package introduced in Java 7 and saw an example using Path like this: ``` Path path = Paths.get("C:\\Users"); ``` Given that Path is an interface I was confused on how you could have a reference to it, however after some research I found out that a reference to an interface is allowed but it must point to a class that implements the interface. Looking on from this I looked at the Paths class and saw that it didn't implement Path. Looking at the source code the actual method Paths.get method is as follows: ``` public static Path get(String first, String... more) { return FileSystems.getDefault().getPath(first, more); } ``` the method first returns an object of type FileSystem (from an abstract class I think) using what I believe is called a static factory method, but FileSystem also doesn't implement the interface. My question is does anyone know/able to explain where the Path interface is actually implemented as I cannot seem to find where this occurs.