nix3-store-cat(1) General Commands Manual nix3-store-cat(1)

Warning
This program is experimental and its interface is subject to change.

nix store cat - print the contents of a file in the Nix store on stdout

nix store cat [option…] path

•
Show the contents of a file in a binary cache:

# nix store cat --store https://cache.nixos.org/ \
  /nix/store/0i2jd68mp5g6h2sa5k9c85rb80sn8hi9-hello-2.10/bin/hello | hexdump -C | head -n1
00000000  7f 45 4c 46 02 01 01 00  00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00  |.ELF............|

This command prints on standard output the contents of the regular file path in a Nix store. path can be a top-level store path or any file inside a store path.