Question

I am very new to Python and have question. How in Python check if two files ( String and file ) have same content ? I need to download some stuffs and rename, but I don’t want to save same stuff with two or more different names (same stuff can be on different ip addresses ).

Answer 1

If the file is large, I would consider reading it in chunks like this:

compare.py:

import hashlib

teststr = "foo"
filename = "file.txt"

def md5_for_file(f, block_size=2**20):
    md5 = hashlib.md5()
    while True:
        data = f.read(block_size)
        if not data:
            break
        md5.update(data.encode('utf8'))
    return md5.digest()


md5 = hashlib.md5()
md5.update((teststr + "\n").encode('utf8'))
digest = md5.digest()
f = open(filename, 'r')
print(md5_for_file(f) == digest)

file.txt:

foo

This program prints True if the string and file match