The md5sum manpage shows a command line option using the following syntax "-c, --check=file". Problem is that the implementation does not accept --check=file syntax, but only "-c file" and "--check file". Could be either an error with the manpage or the implementation... the "me5sum --help is ambiguous... and I'm not up on my getopt standards. Evidence: [root@hobbes tempdo_records]# md5sum list > hash [root@hobbes tempdo_records]# [root@hobbes tempdo_records]# md5sum --check=hash md5sum: option `--check' doesn't allow an argument Try `md5sum --help' for more information. [root@hobbes tempdo_records]# md5sum --check hash list: OK [root@hobbes tempdo_records]# md5sum -c hash list: OK [root@hobbes tempdo_records]#
The man page is definitely different than the usage spit out the md5sum --help command.
This is the output from md5sum --help on a RH 6.0 system. Looks clean to me. md5sum --help Usage: md5sum [OPTION] [FILE]... or: md5sum [OPTION] --check [FILE] Print or check MD5 checksums. With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input. -b, --binary read files in binary mode -c, --check check MD5 sums against given list -t, --text read files in text mode (default) The following two options are useful only when verifying checksums: --status don't output anything, status code shows success -w, --warn warn about improperly formated MD5 checksum lines --help display this help and exit --version output version information and exit