UserPrincipal (Java Platform SE 8 )
Keywords: java.nio.file.attribute.UserPrincipal interface
Date: 2026-01-21

compact1, compact2, compact3
java.nio.file.attribute

## Interface UserPrincipal

- All Superinterfaces:
    Principal
  All Known Subinterfaces:
    GroupPrincipal

      public interface UserPrincipal
      extends 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

- - ### Method Summary

    - ### Methods inherited from interface java.security.Principal

      `equals, getName, hashCode, implies, toString`

Submit a bug or feature
For further API reference and developer documentation, see Java SE Documentation. That documentation contains more detailed, developer-targeted descriptions, with conceptual overviews, definitions of terms, workarounds, and working code examples.
Copyright © 1993, 2026, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Use is subject to license terms. Also see the documentation redistribution policy.