Launch files / directories using Gnome from command line

Launch files / directories using Gnome from command line

On Windows, I can launch an Explorer window from a command line via "start (dirname)". And this will also launch applications associated with a particular file extension, so I can do "start myfile.txt" and it will open the file in the default text editor (e.g. Notepad). Essentially, Windows exposes a way through the command line to perform the same action as a double-click in Explorer.