hadoop fs -text vs hadoop fs -cat vs hadoop fs -get

The main difference between -cat and -text is that text detects the encoding of the file and decodes it to plain text whenever possible whereas cat doesnt do it.

for eg take the example of this lzo compressed file.

using text:

hadoop fs -text hdfs://namenode:8020/user/hive/warehouse/database/000000_0.lzo_deflate1,foo2,bar3,baz4,hello5,world

using cat:

 hadoop fs -cat hdfs://namenode:8020/user/hive/warehouse/database/000000_0.lzo_deflate     ίiW3�I���2�IJ,�2�U\&:�99�\�:��E9)\֙��"

dfs -get command is used to copy files to local-filesystem.

hadoop fs -get hadoop fs -copyToLocal 

Above HDFS commands can be used for copying the HDFS files to local system.

hadoop fs -cat 

This command will display the content of the HDFS file on your stdout (console or command prompt).

hadoop fs  -text 

This will display the content of the hdfs file ( But text only work with zip and TextRecordInputStream formats like SequenceFieFormat).

-text

Usage: hadoop fs -text Takes a source file and outputs the file in text format. The allowed formats are zip and TextRecordInputStream.

-cat

Usage: hadoop fs -cat URI [URI …] Copies source paths to stdout.

-get

Usage: hadoop fs -get [-ignorecrc] [-crc] Copy files to the local file system. Files that fail the CRC check may be copied with the -ignorecrc option. Files and CRCs may be copied using the -crc option.