Is the md5sum linux command working right?
Question
According to Wikipedia, the md5 sum of an empty string is d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
I confirmed this with my md5 library
However, when I run
echo "" | md5sum
in my linux shell, I get 68b329da9893e34099c7d8ad5cb9c940 -
In fact, none of my hashes match the output of the md5sum command.
Any thoughts on this discrepancy?
Solution
With that command, you are calculating the md5sum of a single newline character. Try instead:
echo -n "" | md5sum
OTHER TIPS
You must eliminate the new line that echo produces
$ echo -n '' | md5
d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
Try:
echo -n | md5sum
Without the '-n', echo outputs a newline, which md5sum duly processes.
use the more portable printf
printf "" | md5sum
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