Embodiments of the present invention provide a method, system and computer program product for attribute based file operation implementation selection. In an embodiment of the invention, a method for providing selectable implementations of a file operation is provided. The method includes receiving a directive to perform a file operation on a particular file stored in fixed storage of a computer and identifying an attribute of the particular file. An implementation of the file operation can be selected amongst different implementations of the file operation that maps to the identified attribute. Thereafter, the selected implementation of the file operation can be invoked to perform the file operation upon the particular file.