SHA256SUM(1)

✨ sha256sum — bestie we're doing CHECKSUMS today ✨

okay so you found the sha256sum page in the manual (General Commands Manual, that's her house 🏠) and honestly? iconic. this is the tool that tells you whether a file is exactly the file you think it is. math says so. periodt. 💅

---

🌸 NAME 🌸

sha256sum — print or check the SHA256 checksums 💖

🦋 SYNOPSIS 🦋

sha256sum [OPTIONS] [FILE]...

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

Print or check the SHA256 checksums. that's the whole job, no cap 🫶

---

👑 OPTIONS 👑

• -c, --check — read checksums from the FILEs and check them. the "am i being lied to" mode 💀
• -w, --warn — warn about improperly formatted checksum lines. she will absolutely say something 🙈
• --status — don't output anything, status code shows success. silent but the vibe is in the exit code
• --quiet — don't print OK for each successfully verified file. only the drama gets airtime ✨
• --ignore-missing — don't fail or report status for missing files. she's being chill
• --strict — exit non-zero for improperly formatted checksum lines. no mercy, stern queen 👑
• --tag — create a BSD style checksum
• -z, --zero — end each output line with NUL, not newline, and disable file name escaping. zero as in the byte, not as in "nothing" 🫶
• -h, --help — Print help
• -V, --version — Print version

⭐ VERSION ⭐

v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

calculate the SHA256 checksum for one or more files:

sha256sum path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...

calculate and save the list of SHA256 checksums to a file:

sha256sum path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ... > path/to/file.sha256

calculate a SHA256 checksum from stdin:

command | sha256sum

read a file of SHA256 checksums and filenames and verify all files have matching checksums:

sha256sum [-c|--check] path/to/file.sha256

only show a message for missing files or when verification fails:

sha256sum [-c|--check] --quiet path/to/file.sha256

only show a message when verification fails, ignoring missing files:

sha256sum --ignore-missing [-c|--check] --quiet path/to/file.sha256

check a known SHA256 checksum of a file:

echo known_sha256_checksum_of_the_file path/to/file | sha256sum
[-c|--check]

the examples are provided by the tldr-pages project <https://tldr.sh> under the CC BY 4.0 License. Please note that, as uutils is a work in progress, some examples might fail. 🥲 (not me reminding you twice — it's just the truth bestie)

---

and that's the whole page, fr fr 💜 this one shipped on 2026-09-25 as part of the sha256sum(1) manual, so if you're reading it way later, hey, hi, still valid. go verify something. slay. 🎀🦋💅