Cygwin bash script: open windows explorer anywhere

Here is my take on this job. It is a small script to open Windows Explorer from any path I give it, or the current directory if I don't specify a path.

Updates.
7/07/2009 1:09:35 PM. Updated handling of paths according to Igor Mikushkin's suggestion in the comments - thanks Igor!

Purpose. Open Windows Explorer to any path from a Cygwin bash shell.

Input. Alternative path if current path is not to be used.

Output. Windows Explorer, opened to a given path.

Code.

#!/bin/bash
# I have called this script "windows" in my bin dir.
usage ()
{
 echo "Open Windows Explorer"
 echo "Usage: $0 [-help] [path]"
 echo "          [path]: folder at which to open Windows Explorer, will"
 echo "              default to current dir if not supplied."
 echo "          [-help] Display help (this message)."
}


location=.
case "$1" in
 ""                 ) location=.;;
 "-help"            ) usage; exit 0;;
 *                  ) location="${1}";;
esac

if [ -e "$location" ]
then
   WIN_PATH=`cygpath -w -a "${location}"`
   cmd /C start "" "$WIN_PATH"
else
 echo ${location} does not exist!
 exit 2
fi

One further advantage to this script is when I use it in conjunction with my script to search/list/open files, which I have named "u" in my bin directory. Using these two, I can open a Word doc, for example, with code :

u -e windows someWordDoc.doc

It will search for the file, so I don't need its path. It will then get the Windows OS to handle opening the file.

I could also set up an alias to word directly:

alias word="/cygdrive/b/Program\ Files/Microsoft\ Office/Office/winword.exe"

In this case I could use the following to open the word doc:

word /path/to/someWordDoc.doc

The problem I found with this is that I kept getting an "install" action occurring each time I used word this way - plus, I need to know the path each time. Thus, I found it less painful to use my earlier script. :)