title: hadoop fs -text vs hadoop fs -cat vs hadoop fs -get
body: <p>I believe all the following commands can be used for copying the hdfs files to local file system. What are the differences / situational pro/cons. ( Hadoop newbie here ).</p>
  
  <pre><code>hadoop fs -text /hdfs_dir/* &gt;&gt; /local_dir/localfile.txt
  hadoop fs -cat /hdfs_dir/* &gt;&gt; /local_dir/localfile.txt
  hadoop fs -get /hdfs_dir/* &gt;&gt; /local_dir/
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>My thumb-rule is to avoid using 'text' and 'cat' for big files. ( I use it to copy output of my MR job which is usually smaller in my use case ).</p>