SHA224SUM(1)

📦
version 9.12 · 24 versions
, in arch rolling

🌸 SHA224SUM(1) — User Commands 🌸

okay so bestie, we're in section 1 (User Commands) of the manual, and this one's about sha224sum. sit down, hydrate, and let's get into it 💖

✨ NAME ✨

sha224sum — compute and check SHA224 message digest 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

sha224sum [OPTION]... [FILE]...

✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

So what does it actually do? It prints or checks SHA224 (224-bit) checksums. That's the whole vibe. It's also the legacy interface to the cksum(1) utility, so like… it's the older sibling, still iconic, still showing up. 👑

If you give it no FILE, or if FILE is literally -, it reads standard input. no file? no problem. 🫶

Here are the options, and yes, I'm listing every single one, no skipping:

  • -b, --binary — read in binary mode
  • -c, --check — read checksums from the *FILE*s and check them
  • --tag — create a BSD-style checksum
  • -t, --text — read in text mode (this is the default, so if you do nothing, you already did this 💅)
  • -z, --zero — end each output line with NUL, not newline, and disable file name escaping

the next five? only useful when verifying checksums, so if you're not checking, these are just sitting there being pretty ✨

  • --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 3874 — that's the receipt, bestie 📜. When checking, the input should be a former output of this program (like, it has to actually be output from this thing, don't just feed it anything and act surprised).

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.

and here's the tea 🍵: there is no difference between binary mode and text mode on GNU systems. none. zero. the binary/text distinction is just out here vibing.

✨ AUTHOR ✨

Written by Ulrich Drepper, Scott Miller, and David Madore. legends, fr fr 👑

✨ REPORTING BUGS ✨

Found a bug? Don't suffer in silence, bestie:

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. (like, none. zero. don't come for them 😭)

✨ SEE ALSO ✨

Full documentation https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/sha224sum — or available locally via: info '(coreutils) sha2 utilities'

and that's the whole page, bestie 🎀 this was GNU coreutils 9.12, dated September 2026 — mwah, go checksum something 💖✨🦋

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