The cat command (short for “concatenate”) lists the contents of files to the

terminal window. This is faster than opening the file in an editor, and there’s no
chance you can accidentally alter the file. To read the contents of your
.bash_log_out file, type the following command while the home directory is your
current working directory, as it is by default:

cat .bash_logout

With files longer than the number of lines in your terminal window, the text will
whip past too fast for you to read. You can pipe the output from cat through less
to make the process more manageable. With less you can scroll forward and backward
through the file using the Up and Down Arrow keys, the PgUp and PgDn keys, and the
Home and End keys. Type q to quit from less.

cat .bashrc | less