NSURL

Apple is moving toward using URLs to specify file resources as well as network resources. They are replacing methods that refer to a file by path with methods that refer to the file with a file:// URL. Instead of using an NSString to hold a URL, Foundation wraps the URL string in an NSURL object. NSURL is used for both file URLs and network URLs:

NSURL *someFile = [NSURL fileURLWithPath: @"/Users/rclair/notes.txt"];
NSURL *website =
    [NSURL URLWithString:  @"http://www.chromaticbytes.com"];
NSLog(@"Host: %@ URL: %@", [someFile host], [someFile absoluteString]);
NSLog(@"Host: %@ URL: %@", [website host], [website absoluteString]);