Run the cat command to view object content - Object Storage Service

This topic describes how to run the cat command to view the content of the specified object in a bucket.

Usage notes

To view object content, you must have the oss:GetObject permission. For more information, see Attach a custom policy to a RAM user.
For ossutil 1.6.16 and later, you can directly use ossutil as the binary name in the command line. You do not need to update the binary name based on the operating system. For ossutil earlier than 1.6.16, you need to update the binary name based on the operating system. For more information, see ossutil command reference.

Command syntax

ossutil cat oss://bucketname/objectname [--payer <value>] [--version-id <value>]

Important

We recommend that you run this command to view TXT content.

The following table describes the parameters and options in the command syntax.

Parameter/Option	Description
bucketname	The name of the bucket.
objectname	The name of the object.
--payer	The payer of the request. If you want the requester who accesses the resources in the specified path to pay the fees that are generated by the operation, such as traffic and request fees, set this parameter to requester.
--version-id	The version ID of the object. This parameter applies only to a versioning-enabled or versioning-suspended bucket.

Examples

View the content of the test.txt object in the examplebucket bucket for which versioning is not enabled.
```
ossutil cat oss://examplebucket/test.txt
```
The following output indicates the content of the test.txt object and the time it took to return the output:
```
My Website Home Page.

0.088092(s) elapsed
```
View the content of the exampleobject.txt object in the examplebucket bucket for which versioning is enabled.
```
ossutil cat oss://examplebucket/exampleobject.txt --version-id  CAEQARiBgID8rumR2hYiIGUyOTAyZGY2MzU5MjQ5ZjlhYzQzZjNlYTAyZDE3****
```
For more information about how to query all versions of an object, see Is.
The following output indicates the content of the specified version of the test.txt object and the time it took to return the output:
```
Hello World.

0.044820(s) elapsed
```

Common options

If you use ossutil to switch to a bucket that is located in another region, add the -e option to the command to specify the endpoint of the region in which the specified bucket is located. If you use ossutil to switch to a bucket that belongs to another Alibaba Cloud account, add the -i option to the command to specify the AccessKey ID of the specified account, and add the -k option to the command to specify the AccessKey secret of the specified account.

For example, if you want to view the content of the exampleobject1.txt object in the examplebucket1 bucket that belongs to another Alibaba Cloud account in the China (Shanghai) region, you can run the following command:

ossutil cat oss://examplebucket1/exampleobject1.txt -e oss-cn-shanghai.aliyuncs.com -i LTAI4Fw2NbDUCV8zYUzA****  -k 67DLVBkH7EamOjy2W5RVAHUY9H****

For more information about common options, see Common options.