How can I view an application shortcut's content to find what exact executable line it runs?

I have been wanting to inspect the executable lines from these application shortcuts for several applications as I am having trouble opening each, or would like to know what settings they use by default to start the program. Any way, I would like to know how to do this. It is a common flow for me to see how the program was set-up and inspect where it is failing at each step in the process. I do this in Windows a lot and end up right-clicking the shortcut in the Start Menu or Taskbar, with or without modifier keys being held down at the same time so that I can get the correct context menu items to show up, and select "Properties". I would like the equivalent in Linux-based OS distributions, for at least Ubuntu, Mint, and elementaryOS. For more information: I am still learning how things are usually for these types of operating systems, but through some non-trivial amount of effort, have found that the information I am looking for is usually stored as *.desktop files, and they can be found under at least these 3 directory paths: * /usr/local/share/ * /usr/share/applications/ * ~/.local/share/applications/ For example, I want to create a shortcut to the "Remote Desktop Viewer" application that comes with elementaryOS, so that it opens a connection to a certain host automatically, without having me to click buttons and enter in connection information into the dialog. I would like to avoid having to do guesswork for internet searching for the matching command line executable. > **Edit:** Found out the application executable file's name was "Vinagre"; who would have thought of that.. This is the trouble I would like to avoid in the future :)