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# scheme

The scheme. (read-only)

```
var scheme: String? { get }
```

## Discussion

This property contains the scheme. Any percent-encoded characters are not unescaped. For example, in the URL `http://www.example.com/index.html`, the scheme is `http`.

The full URL is the concatenation of the scheme, a colon (`:`), and the value of [`resourceSpecifier`](/documentation/Foundation/NSURL/resourceSpecifier).

> Note:
> The term “protocol” is also sometimes used when talking about network-based URL schemes. However, not all URL schemes are networking protocols—`data://` URLs, for example.

---

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