MD5SUM(1)

📦
version 9.12 · 24 versions
, in arch rolling

💖 MD5SUM(1) 💖

okay bestie, listen up — this is the manual page for md5sum, living in the User Commands section of your friendly neighborhood manual. she computes and checks MD5 message digests, and honestly? she's been around a while. let's get into it 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

md5sum — compute and check MD5 message digest 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

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

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

She prints or checks MD5 (128-bit) checksums. That's it, that's the job. She's also the legacy interface to the cksum(1) utility — so like, the vintage fit, but the modern girl is cksum. iykyk.

If you give her no FILE, or if FILE is -, she reads from standard input. very demure, very stdin.

  • -b, --binary — read in binary mode 🖥️
  • -c, --check — read checksums from the FILEs and check them ✅
  • --tag — create a BSD-style checksum 🏷️
  • -t, --text — read in text mode (this is the default, no cap) 📝
  • -z, --zero — end each output line with NUL, not newline, and disable file name escaping 🚫

👑 the five options that only matter when you're verifying checksums 👑

these girls are specialists, they don't clock in unless you're in verification mode:

  • --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 ⚠️

and then the two classics that always show up:

  • --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 — so like, don't feed her random stuff and expect her to be normal about it. The default mode is to print a line with: the checksum, a space, a character indicating input mode ('*' for binary, ' ' for text or where binary is insignificant), and the name for each FILE. iconic format, honestly.

🫶 on GNU systems, there is no difference between binary mode and text mode. periodt.

💀 BUGS 💀

okay this is the serious one, bestie, so read it twice:

Do not use the MD5 algorithm for security related purposes. Instead, use an SHA-2, SHA-3, or BLAKE2 algorithm, implemented in the cksum(1) program. MD5 is NOT the moment for your secrets. 🚨

🎀 AUTHOR 🎀

Written by Ulrich Drepper, Scott Miller, and David Madore. legends, all three 🌟

📣 REPORTING BUGS 📣

Found something broken? tell the girlies:

Copyright © 2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.

This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. 😭

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🎀 this was GNU coreutils 9.12, dated September 2026 — mwah, go hash something responsibly, and remember: MD5 for vibes, SHA for secrets 💅✨

📦 where this page comes from