md5sum — compute and check MD5 message digest

Examples (TL;DR)

Synopsis

md5sum [OPTION]... [FILE]...

Description

Print or check MD5 (128-bit) checksums.

With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.

-b, --binary

read in binary mode

-c, --check

read MD5 sums from the FILEs and check them

--tag

create a BSD-style checksum

-t, --text

read in text mode (default)

-z, --zero

end each output line with NUL, not newline, and disable file name escaping

The following five options are useful only when verifying checksums

--ignore-missing

don't fail or report status for missing files

--quiet

don't print OK for each successfully verified file

--status

don't output anything, status code shows success

--strict

exit non-zero for improperly formatted checksum lines

-w, --warn

warn about improperly formatted checksum lines

--help

display this help and exit

--version

output version information and exit

The sums are computed as described in RFC 1321.  When checking, the input should be a former output of this program.  The default mode is to print a line with checksum, a space, a character indicating input mode ('*' for binary, ' ' for text or where binary is insignificant), and name for each FILE.

Note: There is no difference between binary mode and text mode on GNU systems.

Bugs

Do not use the MD5 algorithm for security related purposes. Instead, use an SHA-2 algorithm, implemented in the programs sha224sum(1), sha256sum(1), sha384sum(1), sha512sum(1), or the BLAKE2 algorithm, implemented in b2sum(1)

Author

Written by Ulrich Drepper, Scott Miller, and David Madore.

Reporting Bugs

GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Report any translation bugs to <https://translationproject.org/team/>

See Also

Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/md5sum>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) md5sum invocation'

Referenced By

changestool(1), cksfv(1), debsign(1), fdupes(1), guestfish(1), guestfs(3), mcookie(1), monit(1), perl5140delta(1), pmldigital(1), qtermy-pipe(1), rdfind(1), rhash(1), xorriso(1), xorrisofs(1), xxhsum(1).

October 2019 GNU coreutils 8.31