SHA256SUM(1)

📦
version 9.12 · 24 versions
, in arch rolling

💅 SHA256SUM — the manual, but make it make sense ✨

okay bestie, welcome to sha256sum(1) from the User Commands girlies, GNU coreutils 9.12 era 🎀 this is the page that tells you how to hash your files and how to check that nobody's been messing with them. no cap. let's go 🦋

🌸 NAME 🌸

sha256sum — compute and check SHA256 message digest 💖

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

sha256sum [OPTION]... [FILE]...

🫶 DESCRIPTION 🫶

Print or check SHA256 (256-bit) checksums. This is the legacy interface to the cksum(1) utility, bestie — she's iconic, she's been around, we respect her 🫡

If you give her no FILE at all, or if FILE is -, she reads from standard input. periodt.

  • -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, she's lowkey the default queen)
  • -z, --zero — end each output line with NUL, not newline, and disable file name escaping

💀 The following five options are useful only when verifying checksums 💀

(not me telling you these only hit different during verification 🙈)

  • --ignore-missing — don't fail or report status for missing files
  • --quiet — don't print OK for each successfully verified file (she's humble, she's not bragging)
  • --status — don't output anything, status code shows success (silent but deadly, main character energy)
  • --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 FIPS-180-2. When checking, the input should be a former output of this program. The default mode is to print a line with: checksum, a space, a character indicating input mode ('*' for binary, ' ' for text or where binary is insignificant), and name for each FILE. the way that format just works 🧚

ngl there is no difference between binary mode and text mode on GNU systems. it's giving "same vibe, different flag" 💅

👑 AUTHOR 👑

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

🐛 REPORTING BUGS 🐛

(if you find a bug, tell the girlies, don't suffer in silence 😭)

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. read that again bestie, NO WARRANTY, she said what she said 💀

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

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

📦 where this page comes from