How to read data from internal storage?

Question

There are a lot of code of how to read internal data storage but, they are usually pointing to how to read files from the internal storage of the application (app package). Well I do not want to read from my files folder of the internal app I want to read this file

/data/system/packages.xml

on routed device I am able to see the content but, my question is how can I read the content of the file on any device (routed or not) from android code.

I want to have some function like this

public String readTheWholeContent(){ return theContent;// of the /data/system/packages.xml file }

what permissions do I need to access the /data/ folder of android phone ?

Answer 1

File pa = new File(Environment.getExternalStorageDirectory() + "file.ext");
        StringBuilder text = new StringBuilder();
        try {
            BufferedReader br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(pa));
            String line;
            while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
                text.append(line);
                text.append('\n');
            }
            Log.v("vvv", text.toString());
            return text.toString();
        }
        catch (IOException e) {

        }