SHA512SUM(1)

📦
version 9.12 · 24 versions
, in arch rolling

💖 SHA512SUM(1) 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the User Commands section of the manual, we're doing sha512sum today and honestly? it's giving cryptographic royalty 👑

✨ NAME ✨

sha512sum — compute and check SHA512 message digest 🦋

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

sha512sum [OPTION]... [FILE]...

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

So basically it prints or checks SHA512 (that's 512-bit, she's a big girl 💖) checksums. It's the legacy interface to the cksum(1) utility, iykyk.

If you give it no FILE, or if FILE is literally just -, it reads from standard input. no cap. 🫶

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

  • -b, --binary — read in binary mode 🌈
  • -c, --check — read checksums from the FILEs and check them (the vibe check, but for integrity) 🔥
  • --tag — create a BSD-style checksum 💫
  • -t, --text — read in text mode, which is the default btw ✨
  • -z, --zero — end each output line with NUL instead of a newline, AND disable file name escaping 🧚

👑 the five options that are only useful when you're verifying checksums 👑

like, these ones literally only matter in check mode, bestie:

  • --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 at all; the 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 FIPS-180-2. When you're checking, the input should be a former output of this program — like, it needs to be something sha512sum itself made earlier, fr fr. 🍓

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. iconic formatting, honestly 💅

On GNU systems there is no difference between binary mode and text mode. literally none. periodt. 💜

🌈 AUTHOR 🌈

Written by Ulrich Drepper</>, Scott Miller</>, and David Madore</>. legends, all three 🫶

📢 REPORTING BUGS 📢

Report bugs to: <bug-coreutils@gnu.org>. 🐛

Report any translation bugs to: <https://translationproject.org/team/>. 🌍

GNU coreutils home page: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>

General help using GNU software: <https://www.gnu.org/gethelp/>

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. (yes bestie, no warranty, don't come for us 😭)

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

and that's the whole page, bestie 💅 this was GNU coreutils 9.12, dated September 2026, and you just read the SHA512SUM(1) manual. slay, go hash something 🔥✨💖

📦 where this page comes from