What is the content of data/misc/wifi/softap.conf? I was going through a question about how to find a saved password in a rooted phone and while doing this I found a file in data/misc/wifi/softap.conf. What is the content of this file?
A .conf file is usually readable by any text file reader as long as permissions are correct.

The said file contains SSID and password of your portable Wi-Fi hotspot. E.g.:

Android.SE  #$#$ANDROID


where Android.SE is the SSID which other users would see when trying to locate Wi-Fi network and #$#$ANDROID is the password they need to enter to connect to your hotspot.

As for the name is concerned, I never researched for it because I know ap &rarr; Access point, and I've seen softap term in logcat's output when enabling hotspot.

There are other ways to see the content of this file. In my Android 4.2.1, I can do:

adb shell su -c 'service call wifi 30'


As for the Android 5.0 (CM12), it would be:

adb shell service call wifi 36


The output isn't very human-friendly but it's not unreadable, and you can easily see SSID and password of hotspot.

Edit: For those who might wonder what those adb shell .. commands actually does in bits and pieces, here is a missing piece:


adb shell: you get a remote shell (access to device)
su: to attain root privileges, use if only necessary; -c: is to pass the following command which would  be executed with root privileges 
service: it allows you to read and manipulate services running in your system. Enter adb shell service list to see a list of running ones, and adb shell service to see the command's usage.
call connectivity: to call a particular service (connectivity here). Name of services can be found using service list.
36 is the number assigned to a function of the connectivity service amongst many of it, which we're calling here. You can also pass an integer or a string to the function like adb shell service call connectivity 36 i32 1, but it would take effect only if the function has provision to accept such value. Take a look here to see such functions.