For Textmate there is a command line tool, mate, that can be installed. Once installed you just use `mate <file>` to open that file in text mate. For application that don't have a command line tool, you can use the `open` command with the `-a` flag and the name of the application. i.e. `open -a iTunes` This also works for TextMate: `open -a "TextMate 2"` The executable file is located in the app's Contents/MacOS subfolder, so for TextMate 2, it would be: `/Applications/TextMate\ 2.app/Contents/MacOS/TextMate` But if you run it from the command line like that, it will hang the shell until the application is quit.