Weird behaviour of import tag in spring's configuration file - spring

Question

I am working on the spring spring-3.2.2. I have created two java projects in eclipse.
SpringTest
Testclasspath
SpringTest project is having the below beans.xml in which the one bean is defined.
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd">
<bean id="helloWorld" class="com.spring.HelloWorld" init-method="testUpdate" scope="prototype">
<property name="message" value="Hello World!"/>
</bean>
</beans>
I have created the jar springtest.jar of the project SpringTest and it is been added in the classpath of the project Testclasspath. Bean configuration file for the Testclasspath project is talentacquisition.xml and it is importing the beans.xml file of the Springtest project. Please find the below content of talentacquisition.xml
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-3.0.xsd">
<import resource="Beans.xml"/>
<bean id="juggler" class="com.springaction.springidol.Juggler" />
</beans>
I am confused with behavior of the import tag in the talentacquisition.xml How it is able to locate the Beans.xml which is present in the jar (springtest.jar) in the classpath and able to load the beans? Why spring is not giving any error ? Don't I have to modify the import tag in the talentacqusition.xml to following
<import resource="classpath:Beans.xml"/>
If import is able to locate the file Beans.xml , then when should we use classpath: and classpath* :?

Answer 1

ResourceLoaders are responsible for how Spring loads the resource. From the reference manual
The location path or paths supplied to an ApplicationContext
constructor are actually resource strings, and in simple form are
treated appropriately to the specific context implementation.
ClassPathXmlApplicationContext treats a simple location path as a
classpath location. You can also use location paths (resource strings)
with special prefixes to force loading of definitions from the
classpath or a URL, regardless of the actual context type.
The ClassPathXmlApplicationContext you're instantiating "treats a simple location path as a classpath location", i.e. it treats "Beans.xml" as "classpath:Beans.xml". Similarly, FileSystemXmlApplicationContext would treat "Beans.xml" as "file:Beans.xml".
Section 6.7 of the manual has more details too.