17.4.9 cat

Command: cat [--dos] file

Display the contents of the file file. This command may be useful to remind you of your OS’s root partition:

grub> cat /etc/fstab

If the --dos option is used, then carriage return / new line pairs will be displayed as a simple new line. Otherwise, the carriage return will be displayed as a control character (‘<d>’) to make it easier to see when boot problems are caused by a file formatted using DOS-style line endings.

Note: cat can be used to view the contents of devices using the block list syntax (see Block list syntax). However, it is not advised to view binary data because it will try to decode UTF-8 strings, which can lead to some bytes missing or added in the output. Instead, use the hexdump command (see hexdump).