SUM(1)

📦
version 0.12.0 · 7 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

✨ sum(1) — like, the checksum era 💅

okay bestie, welcome to the General Commands Manual page for sum, and no, it's not the math homework kind of sum, it's the checksum kind 🫶 buckle up.

🌸 NAME 🌸

sum — checksums a file and counts the blocks in it, fr fr.

And listen: if you give it no FILE at all, or you pass - as the FILE, it just reads from standard input. iconic behaviour honestly.

🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

sum [OPTION]... [FILE]...

that's it. that's the whole vibe check. ✨

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

Okay so here's the tea: sum computes a checksum and counts the blocks in a file. That's the whole job. It's giving "simple queen, no drama." 👑

And again, because it matters: with no FILE, or when FILE is -, it reads from standard input. So you can pipe stuff into it and it'll still do its little thing like the icon it is. 🌈

🦋 OPTIONS 🦋

  • -r — use the BSD sum algorithm, and use 1K blocks. this is the default btw, so if you just run it with no flags you're already in BSD mode 💅
  • -s, --sysv — use the System V sum algorithm, and use 512 bytes blocks. different algorithm, different block size, whole different era of Unix lore, iykyk 🧚
  • -h, --help — prints the help. the "bestie what are my options" button 🎀
  • -V, --version — prints the version. the "who even are you" button 👑

⭐ VERSION ⭐

v(uutils coreutils) 0.12.0

that's the version string. write it down, it's important, no cap. 🍓

✨ EXAMPLES ✨

these are the good part, let's get into it

1. Compute a checksum with a BSD-compatible algorithm and 1024-byte blocks:

sum path/to/file

no flags needed, remember, -r is the default so you're already slaying 💅

2. Compute a checksum with a System V-compatible algorithm and 512-byte blocks:

sum [-s|--sysv] path/to/file

there's the switch-up. same command, different flavour. periodt. 🫶

💀 heads up bestie: these examples come from the tldr-pages project at <https://tldr.sh>, and they're under the CC BY 4.0 License. Also — and this is the real talk — since uutils is a work in progress, some of these examples might legit fail. not a vibe, but it's the truth, so know it going in. 😭

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

hmm, nothing listed here, so... go text your group chat about it instead, honestly 💜

and that's the whole page, bestie!! 🌸 go checksum something and feel powerful about it. this page came out of the General Commands Manual and it's dated 2026-09-25. mwah, love u, bye 🎀💖✨

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