How to view the files from /root/data folder?

Question

I want to see the files from /root/data/data folder. Is there any application/trick which can do this?

Answer 1

Short answer

You cannot do that without having your device rooted, as the file permissions won't allow you to list contents there. You will be able to change into /data/data, but you will not see a single thing there.

Longer explanation

While one might be able to access /data/data without root (i.e. change into that directory), permissions are set to forbid listing its contents:

shell@android:/ $ ls /data/data
opendir failed, Permission denied
1|shell@android:/ $ cd /data/data
shell@android:/data/data $ 
shell@android:/data/data $ ls -l /data
opendir failed, Permission denied

This is what happens on a device without root (output created just now on my Cat Stargate 2 running Android 4.1.1). Repeating the same on my HTC Wildfire running CM9 (Android 4.0.4) and having root access enabled looks a little different, and should give us the wanted details (output cut to the necessary stuff):

adb shell
root@android:/ # ls -l /data
drwxrwx--x system   system            2013-02-27 02:01 data

As it is clearly shown, /data/data is owned by the user system group system, with this user and group being the only having full read/write/execute access. Everybody else only has execute permission, enabling all processes to change into that directory. This is necessary for the apps to access their data: They know their package names, and such an app named com.foo.bar can directly jump to /data/data/com.foo.bar which it owns and has full access to.

Answer 2

Simply use a file manager app like AndroZip File Manager

Keep in mind that you cannot edit the files if you do not have root access. It is not harmful only to read the files though.