Referencing application class directly vs indirectly

Scripting Forums AppleScriptObjC and Xcode
#1

Is there a (material) difference between referencing an Objective-C class using the class name directly versus the ‘class’ keyword with string “literal”?

Using NSURL as an example:

set theNSURL to current application's NSURL's fileURLWithPath:posixPath

Compared to:

set theNSURL to current application's class "NSURL"'s fileURLWithPath:posixPath

Thanks,
Lance

#2

It’s a good question. The only answer I can give is that the class version was used in Apple samples originally, but last I heard from one of the Apple team, the variable form was now preferred.