cat > file.txt <<EOF
Whoever thinks a faultless Piece to see,
  Thinks what ne’er was, nor is, nor e’er shall be.
In ev’ry Work regard the Writer’s End,
  Since none can compass more than they Intend;
  And if the Means be just, the Conduct true,
  Applause, in spite of trivial Faults, is due.
As Men of Breeding, oft the Men of Wit
  T’ avoid great Errors, must the less commit,
  Neglect the Rules each Verbal Critick lays,
  For not to know some Trifles, is a Praise.
Most Criticks fond of some subservient Art,
  Still make the Whole depend upon a Part,
  They talk of Principles, but Parts they prize,
  And All to one lov’d Folly Sacrifice.
EOF

You’ll now generate the MD5 sum for the file and store it. To generate the sum for your new file, enter this md5sum command:

md5sum file.txt > file.txt.md5

This creates the MD5 hash, and saves it to a new file. You can take a look at the hash by printing its contents to the screen, using this command:

cat file.txt.md5

This should print the hash to the terminal, which should look something like this:

1e95a5e71c61c50188fbd9be3ec55420 file.txt

More importantly, you can also verify that the hash is correct, and that the original file hasn’t been tampered with since the sum was made. To do this, enter this command and see the following output, which indicates that the hash is valid:

md5sum -c file.txt.md5

file.txt: OK

We add a single space at the end of a copy of file.txt:

cp file.txt badfile.txt
md5sum badfile.txt > badfile.txt.md5
cat badfile.txt.md5

1e95a5e71c61c50188fbd9be3ec55420 badfile.txt

md5sum -c badfile.txt.md5

badfile.txt: OK

echo " " >> badfile.txt
md5sum -c badfile.txt.md5

badfile.txt: FAILED
md5sum: WARNING: 1 computed checksum did NOT match

md5sum badfile.txt > new.badfile.txt.md5
cat new.badfile.txt.md5

3f5554cbe38d7feb184e97d7e9db511a badfile.txt

To create the SHA1 sum and save it to a file, use this command:

shasum file.txt > file.txt.sha1

cat file.txt.sha1

e03033f6a4b5dc5494591ec610393b4d5518d8f4  file.txt

Now, verify the hash using the command below. (Like before, this would fail if the original file had been changed.)

shasum -c file.txt.sha1

file.txt: OK

The same tool can be used to create a SHA256 sum. The “-a” flag specifies the algorithm to use, and defaults to SHA1 if nothing is specified. To generate the SHA256 sum of the file, use this command:

shasum -a 256 file.txt > file.txt.sha256

cat file.txt.sha256

4161ecc29ef36470a9346b7ee9e2b1b6fc58eddb62d5bc5a581961c435bce3a6  file.txt

Finally, to verify the SHA256 sum, you can use the same command as before:

shasum -c file.txt.sha256

file.txt: OK

We copy delete the last line of file.txt:

sed -i '$d' file.txt
shasum -c file.txt.sha256

file.txt: FAILED
shasum: WARNING: 1 computed checksum did NOT match

But then:

echo "  And All to one lov’d Folly Sacrifice." >> file.txt
shasum -c file.txt.sha256

file.txt: OK