Reading and writing remote files are almost same as editing remote files.

To read a remote file from our local system, we simply open it using command:

vim scp://peterk@192.168.1.69/test.txt

View the remote file’s contents from your local system to verify if the file has been really modified using command:

ssh peter@192.168.1.69 cat test.txt

Please note that if you want to mention the absolute path for the directory on the remote host, use double slashes **//** as shown in the following command:

vim scp://peter@192.168.1.69//home/peter/Documents/test.txt

Just in case you have already changed the default SSH port for security purposes, you should explicitly mention the SSH port no like below.

vim scp://peter@192.168.1.69:2200/test.txt

Replace 2200 with your SSH port number.

If you don’t have ssh/scp access, you can use other protocols, for example ftp, like below.

vim ftp://user@remotesystem/path/to/file