gvfs-cat

gvfs-cat [OPTION...] <LOCATION>...

-h, --help
    Show help options and exit

--version
    Print version information and exit

gvfs-cat is a utility from the GNOME Virtual File System (GVFS) that reads and outputs the contents of files specified by GVFS URIs to standard output, similar to cat but exclusively for virtual filesystems.

It supports local files (file://) and remote protocols like SMB (smb://), FTP (ftp://), SFTP (sftp://), WebDAV (dav://), HTTP, and more, without needing to mount them first. This enables easy access to remote or fused files in scripts and pipelines.

Unlike cat, it ignores stdin and requires full URIs. Multiple locations can be specified; contents are printed sequentially without separators. The GVFS daemon must be running, and the backend must support random access reads for best performance.

Ideal for quick inspection of remote files, e.g., gvfs-cat smb://host/share/doc.txt. Errors occur for non-files, inaccessible URIs, or unsupported operations.

No stdin support; requires running GVFS daemon; backends may limit large files or streams; fails on directories or non-readable URIs.

gvfs-cat file:///etc/hosts
Show local file contents.

gvfs-cat smb://server/share/notes.txt
Display SMB file.

gvfs-cat http://example.com/data.json | jq .
Pipe remote JSON to jq.

Introduced in GVFS 0.1 (2006) as part of GNOME's GIO/GVFS framework for FUSE-like virtual FS access without mounting.

cat(1), gio(1), gvfs-ls(1), gvfs-copy(1)