CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashshellmd5checksum
user3914897
user3914897

Reputation: 115

Is it possible to generate a checksum (md5 ) a string in a shell?

I would like to have a unique ID for filenames so I can iterate over the IDs and compare the checksums of the files? Is it possible to have a checksum for the name of the file so I can have a unique ID per filename? I would welcome other ideas.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 15217

Answers (3)

user2350426
user2350426

Reputation:

Yes, it is possible to obtain the MD5 of an string:

$ printf '%s' "This-Filename" | md5sum
dd829ba5a7ba7bdf7a391f2e0bd7cd1f  -

It is important to understand that there is no newline at the end of the printed string. An equivalent in bash would be to use echo -n:

$ echo -n "This-Filename" | md5sum
dd829ba5a7ba7bdf7a391f2e0bd7cd1f  -

The -n (valid in bash) is important because otherwise your hash would change with the inclusion of a newline that is not part of the text:

$ echo "This-Filename" | md5sum
7ccba9dffa4baf9ca0e56c078aa09a07  -

That also apply to file contents:

$ echo -n "This-Filename" > infile
$ md5sum infile
dd829ba5a7ba7bdf7a391f2e0bd7cd1f  infile

$ echo "This-Filename" > infile
$ md5sum infile
7ccba9dffa4baf9ca0e56c078aa09a07  infile

Upvotes: 2

Sergey Tselovalnikov
Sergey Tselovalnikov

Reputation: 6036

Is it what you want?

Plain string:

serce@unit:~$ echo "Hello, checksum!" | md5sum
9f898618b071286a14d1937f9db13b8f  -

And file content:

serce@unit:~$ md5sum agent.yml
3ed53c48f073bd321339cd6a4c716c17  -

Upvotes: 4

Inian
Inian

Reputation: 85855

Yes it is possible using md5sum and basename $0 gives the name of current file

Assuming I have the script as below named md5Gen.sh

#!/bin/bash

mdf5string=$(basename "$0" | md5sum )
echo -e `basename "$0"` $mdf5string

Running the script would give me 

md5Gen.sh 911949bd2ab8467162e27c1b6b5633c0 -

Upvotes: 3

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