the instruction
nautilus .

also works;

I moved nautilus to another name (/usr/bin/nautilusmod) and created a new script /usr/bin/nautilus that way :
===========
#!/bin/sh
#nautilus modificato per farlo aprire nella directory corrente

nautilusmod .
===============
So each time nautilus is called it is executed in the current directory; there is certainly a gconf-editor setting doing the same, but gconf-editor is black magic…

Just do
gnome-open .

in a dir
that will launch your default handler for a folder (which is nautilus for most users).
I have added an alias in /etc/profile
alias go=’gnome-open’

so i just type ‘go’.
It is also perfect for just launching the default action on a file, so:

go XXX.zip will launch the file-roller, etc.