rclone/docs/content/commands/rclone_cat.md

---
date: 2020-05-25T12:06:00+01:00
title: "rclone cat"
description: "Concatenates any files and sends them to stdout."
slug: rclone_cat
url: /commands/rclone_cat/
# autogenerated - DO NOT EDIT, instead edit the source code in cmd/cat/ and as part of making a release run "make commanddocs"
---
# rclone cat

Concatenates any files and sends them to stdout.

## Synopsis


rclone cat sends any files to standard output.

You can use it like this to output a single file

    rclone cat remote:path/to/file

Or like this to output any file in dir or its subdirectories.

    rclone cat remote:path/to/dir

Or like this to output any .txt files in dir or its subdirectories.

    rclone --include "*.txt" cat remote:path/to/dir

Use the --head flag to print characters only at the start, --tail for
the end and --offset and --count to print a section in the middle.
Note that if offset is negative it will count from the end, so
--offset -1 --count 1 is equivalent to --tail 1.


```
rclone cat remote:path [flags]
```

## Options

```
      --count int    Only print N characters. (default -1)
      --discard      Discard the output instead of printing.
      --head int     Only print the first N characters.
  -h, --help         help for cat
      --offset int   Start printing at offset N (or from end if -ve).
      --tail int     Only print the last N characters.
```

See the [global flags page](/flags/) for global options not listed here.

## SEE ALSO

* [rclone](/commands/rclone/)	 - Show help for rclone commands, flags and backends.