How can you view a file's Hash or checksum?

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JeffCMKRNL Author

Level 1

31 points

How can you view a file's Hash or checksum?

How can you view a file's Hash or checksum? It does not seem to appear in the File's "Get Info" window.

Dual PowerMAC G5, G5 Mac Mini, CoreDuo MacBook, Mac OS X (10.5.7), If only Mac were based on VMS instead of mach kernel

Posted on Jul 5, 2009 5:38 PM

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Answer 1

Jul 5, 2009 5:53 PM in response to JeffCMKRNL

If you want the MD5 checksum, you can open the Terminal and type "md5" followed by a space. Then drag the desired file to the Terminal window to complete the full filepath. Then press enter to have the MD5 checksum calculated. You can also do this for other checksum algorithms: dgst, md4, md2, sha1, sha, mdc2.

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Answer 2

Jul 6, 2009 8:48 AM in response to Topher Kessler

I'm slightly incorrect here. While this will work for the MD5 checksum, the official way to do this is to use the openssl command such as "openssl dgst -MD5 path/to/file".

This can be done for all supported checksum algorithms.

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