Question

I am getting MD5 of several files using python function:

filehash = hashlib.md5(file)
print "FILE HASH: " + filehash.hexdigest()

though when I go to the terminal and do a

md5 file

the result I’m getting is not the same my python script is outputting (they don’t match). Any chance someone knows why?

Answer 1

hashlib.md5() takes the contents of the file not its name.

See http://docs.python.org/library/hashlib.html

You need to open the file, and read its contents before hashing it.

f = open(filename,'rb')
m = hashlib.md5()
while True:
    ## Don't read the entire file at once...
    data = f.read(10240)
    if len(data) == 0:
        break
    m.update(data)
print m.hexdigest()