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The class BasicFileAttributes, for examining the properties of a file in the file system, has the method isRegularFile(). Unfortunately, the Javadoc description is rather lacking:
Tells whether the file is a regular file with opaque content.
What does this mean? What exactly is a regular file with opaque content? I can tell from the other methods in the class that it's not a directory or symbolic link, so I'm inclined to think that it's everything else. However, there apparently is some type of "irregular file" because a method exists called isOther(), which returns true if it's not a directory, symbolic link, or "regular file".
So what exactly is an regular file in Java?
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Regular files are neither directories nor special files. They are primarily used to store text or binary data.
The File class is Java's representation of a file or directory pathname. Because file and directory names have different formats on different platforms, a simple string is not adequate to name them.
File handling in Java implies reading from and writing data to a file. The File class from the java.io package, allows us to work with different formats of files. In order to use the File class, you need to create an object of the class and specify the filename or directory name.
Files is utility class holding static methods for managing file system, File is class which instances represent single path (with few additional methods allowing manipulating this path).
For example in UNIX, a regular file is one that is not special in some way. Special files include symbolic links and directories. A regular file is a sequence of bytes stored permanently in a file system.
Read this answer @ UNIX & Linux stackexchange: What is a regular file?
I figure rm -i is an alias, possibly rm -i. The "regular" part doesn't mean anything in particular, it only means that it's not a pipe, device, socket or anything other "special".
it means the file is not a symlink, pipe, rand, null, cpu, etc. Perhaps you have heard the linux philosophy everything is a text. This isn't literally true, but it suggests a dominant operational context where string processing tools can be applied to filesystem elements directly. In this case, it means that in a more literal fashion. To see the detection step in isolation, try the command file, as in file /etc/passwd or file /dev/null.
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