Digest::file(3pm)

🌸 NAME 🌸

Bestie, welcome to Digest::file(3pm) from the Perl Programmers Reference Guide — this module is literally here to Calculate digests of files. Periodt. 💅

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

Here’s the iconic “poor man’s md5sum” moment, copied exactly so you can slay it yourself:

# Poor mans "md5sum" command
use Digest::file qw(digest_file_hex);
for (@ARGV) {
    print digest_file_hex($_, "MD5"), "  $_\n";
}

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🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

This module provides 3 convenience functions to calculate the digest of files. The following functions are provided:

💖 digest_file( $file, $algorithm, [$arg,...] )

This function will calculate and return the binary digest of the bytes of the given file. The function will croak if it fails to open or read the file. 😭

The $algorithm is a string like "MD2", "MD5", "SHA-1", "SHA-512". Additional arguments are passed to the constructor for the implementation of the given algorithm. 🫶

🦋 digest_file_hex( $file, $algorithm, [$arg,...] )

Same as digest_file(), but return the digest in hex form. ✨

🌈 digest_file_base64( $file, $algorithm, [$arg,...] )

Same as digest_file(), but return the digest as a base64 encoded string. 🎀

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🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

Digest

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okay bye bestie 💅 — this page is from perl v5.42.3, dated 2026-11-03, and it’s the Digest::file(3pm) manual page. mwah 🫶