Unable to view the contents of file in ansible managed nodes - plugins

Question

I'm trying to view the contents of a file from managed node and control node, here I see the syntax works fine for localhost (172.17.254.200) but not for the remote hosts. Below is the task I have written using lookup / query plugin, can you please suggest the fix:
---
- name: Report Test
hosts: all
roles:
- patching
tasks:
- name: Display the Pre and Post check Differences
debug:
msg: "{{ query('file', '/tmp/check/{{ inventory_hostname }}_Comparison') }}"
Below is the output
TASK [patching : Display the Pre and Post check Differences] ***********************************************************************************************************
ok: [172.17.254.200] =>
msg:
- |-
free_m - YES
sysctl_all - YES
uptime - YES
[WARNING]: Unable to find '/tmp/check/172.17.254.207_Comparison' in expected paths (use -vvvvv to see paths)
fatal: [172.17.254.207]: FAILED! =>
msg: 'An unhandled exception occurred while running the lookup plugin ''file''. Error was a <class ''ansible.errors.AnsibleError''>, original message: could not locate file in lookup: /tmp/check/172.17.254.207_Comparison'
[WARNING]: Unable to find '/tmp/check/172.17.254.208_Comparison' in expected paths (use -vvvvv to see paths)
fatal: [172.17.254.208]: FAILED! =>
msg: 'An unhandled exception occurred while running the lookup plugin ''file''. Error was a <class ''ansible.errors.AnsibleError''>, original message: could not locate file in lookup: /tmp/check/172.17.254.208_Comparison'

Answer 1

Lookups are executed on Ansible controller (as pointed out by #Vladimir Botka). If you just want to view the contents of a file on remote hosts, you can cat the file through ansible and debug the stdout_lines.
- command: "cat /tmp/check/{{ inventory_hostname }}_Comparison"
register: file_cat
changed_when: false
- debug:
var: file_cat.stdout_lines

Answer 2

lookup and query "execute and are evaluated on the Ansible control machine."
Use slurp. Quoting:
This module returns an ‘in memory’ base64 encoded version of the file, take into account that this will require at least twice the RAM as the original file size.
For larger files use fetch. Quoting:
It is used for fetching files from remote machines and storing them locally in a file tree, organized by hostname.