Windows equivalent of the Mac OS X “open” command

Question

Liu Chang asked a very similar question to this one here, Linux equivalent of the Mac OS X "open" command.

Is there a windows equivalent for the Mac OS X "open" command. I'm trying to run a profiler that will open it's results, but it's looking for the "open" command. Basically, the command needs to open a file from the command prompt as if it were double-clicked on in explorer.

Answer 1

The closest thing available is start.

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If its first argument is double-quoted, that argument is treated as a window title rather than a filename. Thus, to use it robustly, add an empty string as the first argument:

start "" "my filename.foo"

_{Thank you to @Holger for pointing this out!}

Answer 2

Just typing the file name into a console window will open the file in Windows. I tried several formats - .doc opened with OpenOffice, .mp3 opened with Windows Media Player, and .txt opened with Wordpad. This is the same behavior I experience when double clicking on the files.

Answer 3

I use to write

explorer.exe <file>

Answer 4

Try explorer <filename>. For example I wanted to launch a folder named abc placed at desktop, so I used the command

explorer abc

Answer 5

Only explorer.exe appears to work under cygwin.

Answer 6

I am answering this again as the accepted answer is not correct which is using the start command (which opens up the CMD as a new instance) and also because The Equivalent according to me is explorer.exe as also mentioned by others but not clarified as it should have been!

So, If you want to open the current folder like that with the 'open' command. you should use

explorer.exe .

which will open the current folder in explorer or if you just do the

explorer.exe 

then you will open the default This PC location (whether it is recents or my computer or anything else)

It just works as in, when you just type in the file name it will just open in the default program just like

somevideo.mp4

and if you want that file/video to open/play with some other program just write down the program name with the full path (if it's not in the PATH system variable) followed by the filename like

"C:\program files\greentree applications\vlc.exe" somevideo.mp4

Answer 7

If you use cygwin (or git bash), here's a quick script hack. Change the EDITOR to be whatever you want:

#!/bin/sh
# open

EDITOR="exec subl.exe"
BROWSER="/c/Program Files (x86)/Google/Chrome/Application/chrome.exe"

if [ -d "$1" ]; then
    exec explorer.exe $(cygpath -w "$1")
elif [ -f "$1" ]; then
    path=$(cygpath --windows "$1")
    case "$1" in
    *.xml) $EDITOR "$1";;
    *.txt) $EDITOR "$1";;
    *.html) "$BROWSER" "$path";;
    file://*) "$BROWSER" "$path";;
    http://*) "$BROWSER" "$path";;
    https://*) "$BROWSER" "$path";;
    esac
else
    # TODO non-existent file/dir
    echo "non existent file: $1"
    exit 1
fi

exit 0

Answer 8

'start' is definitely the closest thing for Windows as @charles-duffy stated. Depending on your project there are also a few tools out there that solve this problem.

Node opn is a pretty great solution to be totally cross platform

Answer 9

if you're on xfce, and you have Thunar, you can run the command " Thunar . " to open graphically current folder