From Wine-Wiki

wine start comes with wine. The header of start.c informs that it will start a program using ShellExecuteEx, optionally wait for it to finish and is Compatible with Microsoft's "c:\windows\command\start.exe"

It's help file says it will Start a program, or open a document in the program normally used for files with that suffix. Usage:

start [options] program_filename [...]

start [options] document_filename

Options:

/M[inimized] Start the program minimized.

/MAX[imized] Start the program maximized.

/R[estored] Start the program normally (neither minimized nor maximized).

/W[ait] Wait for started program to finish, then exit with its exit code.

/L Show end-user license.

[edit] Forum Comments

M. McCormack [Oct 06]: cmd.exe uses CreateProcess by default, and ShellExecute if you use "start". The ShellExecute code isn't perfect, so if you're going to fix something, start looking there. wine archive

[wine user Apr 06] Does anyone knows how to use the WINEPRELOADRESERVE (bash variable ?) to avoid recompiling wine ?

M. Hearn: It's internal, try "wine start whatever.exe" instead of "wine whatever.exe"

[Nov 05] Invoking 'wine start.exe' will not run this program [such as Quicken], but the start.exe that comes with wine. The only workaround is to do WINEDLLOVERRIDES="start.exe=n" wine start.exe wine archive

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