Class FSDirectory

Base class for Directory implementations that store index files in the file system.

There are currently three core subclasses:

• SimpleFSDirectory is a straightforward implementation using . However, it has poor concurrent performance (multiple threads will bottleneck) as it synchronizes when multiple threads read from the same file.
• NIOFSDirectory uses java.nio's FileChannel's positional io when reading to avoid synchronization when reading from the same file. Unfortunately, due to a Windows-only Sun JRE bug this is a poor choice for Windows, but on all other platforms this is the preferred choice. Applications using or should use SimpleFSDirectory instead. See NIOFSDirectory java doc for details.
• MMapDirectory uses memory-mapped IO when reading. This is a good choice if you have plenty of virtual memory relative to your index size, eg if you are running on a 64 bit runtime, or you are running on a 32 bit runtime but your index sizes are small enough to fit into the virtual memory space.

  Applications using or should use SimpleFSDirectory instead. See MMapDirectory doc for details.

Unfortunately, because of system peculiarities, there is no single overall best implementation. Therefore, we've added the Open(String) method (or one of its overloads), to allow Lucene to choose the best FSDirectory implementation given your environment, and the known limitations of each implementation. For users who have no reason to prefer a specific implementation, it's best to simply use Open(String) (or one of its overloads). For all others, you should instantiate the desired implementation directly.

The locking implementation is by default NativeFSLockFactory, but can be changed by passing in a custom LockFactory instance.