Since Mac OS X is a unix based system, you can always use “getcwd” from the standard C library, but in general if you want to stick within the context of Objective-C/Cocoa, see the examples below.

Here’s one snippet you will probably Google quickly, but ultimately not the solution I chose.

(original code from stackoverflow see reference below)

NSFileManager *filemgr;
NSString *currentpath;

filemgr = [[NSFileManager alloc] init];

currentpath = [filemgr currentDirectoryPath];

Solution

Using the “bundle path” rather than “executable path” turned out to work much better in my instance:

NSString *currentpath = [[[[NSBundle mainBundle] bundlePath] stringByDeletingPathExtension] stringByDeletingLastPathcomponent];
NSString *fileName = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@/%@/",currentpath,@"filename.pdf"];

References
stackoverflow.com, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3692489/getting-current-directory-in-objective-c
friendlydeveloper.com, “NSFileManager”, http://www.friendlydeveloper.com/tag/nsfilemanager/
techtopia.com, “Working with Directories in Objective c”, http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/Working_with_Directories_in_Objective-C
Macrumors Forums, http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=524754
stackoverflow, “Find Parent Directory of a path”, http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1309524/cocoa-objc-find-parent-directory-of-a-path