pipe-checksum(1)

📦
version 2.2.10 · 2 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

✨ pipe-checksum(1) ✨

okay so bestie, welcome to pipe-checksum — it lives in the General Commands Manual section of the manual pages (yes that's the (1), iykyk) and it is genuinely one of the most lowkey-useful little tools in the whole toolbox. let's get into it 💅

🌸 NAME 🌸

pipe-checksum — write stdin to a file and make a second file holding the checksum of that data 🎀

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

pipe-checksum file [-D MD5|SHA1|SHA256|SHA384|SHA512|... |‐
               --digest MD5|SHA1|SHA256|SHA384|SHA512|...]
pipe-checksum [-h | --help]
pipe-checksum [-v | --version]

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

so here's the vibe: pipe-checksum takes all the data coming in on standard input and writes it into the file you named, <file>. not only that, it also computes the checksum of that data and drops it into a brand-new file called <file>.checksum. two files, one command, no cap ✨

you get to pick which message digest algorithm it uses, and if you don't pick one it just defaults to SHA256. the checksum is written in BSD-style checksum format — literally the same thing the sha256sum tool writes — so any tool that speaks this format can be used to compare against it. slay 🔥

💅 ARGUMENTS 💅

here's everything you can hand it:

  • file — the output file name, bestie. where your stdin data is gonna live. 📁
  • -D MD5|SHA1|SHA256|SHA384|SHA512|..., --digest MD5|SHA1|SHA256|SHA384|SHA512|... Sets the message digest. and listen, any digest that the underlying libcrypto library supports is fair game — it's not a short list, it's a whole menu. if you run pipe-checksum with no options at all, or if you give it an invalid digest, it will hand you back the list of all the supported digests. so honestly, just ask it. Default: SHA256 🧚
  • -h, --help Prints command help. your friendly little cheat sheet 🫶
  • -v, --version Prints program version. so you know exactly which era of this beautiful thing you're on ⭐

👑 EXIT STATUS 👑

the pipe-checksum tool exits with 0 on success, and >0 in case of an error. clean and simple, no messy in-between. periodt 💜

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

get you a tool that can do both 💅 here's the whole demo reel, verbatim:

date | pipe-checksum date.txt

sha256sum --check date.txt.checksum

date | pipe-checksum date.txt --digest SHA384

dd if=/dev/urandom bs=12345 count=67 | hexdump | pipe-checksum
        random.txt

dd if=/dev/urandom bs=12345 count=67 | pipe-checksum random.txt --digest
        SHA512

sha512sum --check random.txt.checksum

pipe-checksum --version

pipe-checksum -h

🎀 NOTES 🎀

this program is part of HiPerConTracer. the latest version of HiPerConTracer can be found on the HiPerConTracer Homepage at HiPerConTracer Homepage: https://www.nntb.no/~dreibh/hipercontracer/ 🌐

💀 AUTHORS 💀

Thomas Dreibholz, Homepage: https://www.nntb.no/~dreibh — thank you for this one fr fr 🙈

okay that's the whole page, you're fully caught up. go pipe something into it and feel like the main character 🦋

and for the record, this was pipe-checksum from the General Commands Manual, and the page is dated May 26, 2026 — that's the version/date sign-off, babe. bye bestie, go checksum something 💖✨🎀

📦 where this page comes from