  In-Memory Virtual Filesystems    • submit to reddit Alex
Miller recently wrote an interesting piece about the need for
Java to have an in-memory virtual filesystem (here), in the
context of JSR-203. Alex notes that athough "[a] virtual
filesystem will not be included as part of JSR 203", "the API is
designed to be extensible and all of the hooks exist to provide
such an implementation".  I really like his use case for having
such a filesystem:  Having a virtual memory system to plug into
would be fantastic for unit testing. You could create files to
your heart’s content and the file access would be fast while
also saving you from all the annoying issues with deleting
temporary files, Windows file locking, etc.  Makes sense to me.
In the comments to his blog entry, a few existing solutions are
mentioned, in particular, Commons VFS and the JBoss
Microcontainer project. Also, another use case for a filesystem
of this kind can be found there:  It may also be useful when
running on operating systems that don’t h