START Command

Open a new command prompt window

START will instantiate a new CMD.exe shell for the called Batch. This will inherit variables from the calling shell, but any variable changes will be discarded when the second script ends.

@REM This opens a new command prompt window and continues the execution of the batch file
 
start cmd.exe
 
@REM This opens a new command prompt window named "My terminal", which prints "Hello World" and remains open while the calling batch file has continued its execution
 
start "My terminal" cmd.exe /k "echo Hello World"
 
@REM Real life example
START "Kafka Schema Registry" wsl docker-compose up

NOTE: start searches for a specified executable file, and if found the executable will launch regardless of the current working directory. When searching for an executable file, if there’s no match on any extension, start checks to see if the name matches a directory name. If it does, start opens Explorer.exe on that path.

See also: Microsoft, SS64 Docs for START command [1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/administration/windows-commands/start [2]: https://ss64.com/nt/start.html