← Navigate the Filesystem
Read a file
Learn
Look inside a file
Listing tells you a file exists; to see what's in it, cat FILE prints its contents
straight to the screen, so you can read it without opening an editor.
cat notes.txt
It's the quickest way to check a config file, read a README, or confirm that a script
wrote what you expected. (For long files you'd reach for a pager like less, but for
anything that fits on a screen, cat is the reflex.)
Your task
Print the contents of readme.txt with cat.
Interview prep
Filesystem basics come up in every infra screen.
How do you list files including hidden ones, with details?
ls -la — -l is the long format (permissions, owner, size, mtime) and -a includes dotfiles like .env and .gitignore.