How can I recursively list Md5sum of all the files in a directory and its subdirectories?

Question

I want to list (and save) Md5 check sum of all the files in a directory and save that list in a text file called md5sum.txt

it would be also nice if I could

Integrate it within tree command (which creates a tree structure of folders and files)
Make it work on Folders and Sub folders (this is sort of important)

For separate checksum files for each subfolder, see also [this answer](https://stackoverflow.com/a/71286224/111036) — mivk, Feb 27 '22 at 17:18

Zanna · Accepted Answer · 2017-04-23T06:54:59.113

58

You could use find (in the directory)

find -type f -exec md5sum '{}' \; > md5sum.txt

If you want to exclude the md5sum.txt file itself, you can do so:

find -type f \( -not -name "md5sum.txt" \) -exec md5sum '{}' \; > md5sum.txt

You can also use a loop: turn on recursive globbing

shopt -s globstar

Then, in the directory:

for i in **; do [[ -f "$i" ]] && md5sum "$i" >> md5sum.txt; done

You can exclude the file itself from this one as well:

for i in **; do 
  [[ -f "$i" ]] && 
  [[ md5sum.txt != "$i" ]] && 
  md5sum "$i" >> md5sum.txt
done

Neither of these produces a tree-like structure. But they do print the relative path to the file from the starting directory. If you want the absolute path, use find /path/to/directory ...

You might want to turn off globstar afterwards (shopt -u globstar)

edited Apr 23 '17 at 06:54

answered Apr 23 '17 at 06:40

Zanna

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this also creates md5sum of the `md5sum.txt` file itself. would be nice it wasn't – Anwar Apr 23 '17 at 06:51
2

@Anwar see edit for slightly cumbersome exclusion ^_^ – Zanna Apr 23 '17 at 06:55
1

Ah! seen it. I better one line in a huge md5sum.txt then extra 5 lines of code. Anyway, thank – Anwar Apr 23 '17 at 07:02
3

can always do: "> ../md5sum.txt" to ensure that the file doesn't get included in the result – user1985553 Feb 10 '18 at 20:25
For binary files don't forget to add -b after the md5sum command. – Roland Pihlakas May 13 '18 at 14:16
if you wanna continuously filenames in output, do `sort -k2 -o md5sum.txt md5sum.txt` – n0099 Jan 28 '23 at 18:19

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 23 '17 at 06:41

2

You can execute the following command:

md5sum /path/to/directory/* > /path_to_result/md5sum.txt

The output in the result file will be something like that:

46684e3891d990acde2e723ee3d4e94a  /var/log/alternatives.log
39cf1ebf93452ed5f8b240b35ae73f9f  /var/log/alternatives.log.1
aa6c09c411d1d0870bca5f401d589332  /var/log/alternatives.log.2.gz

answered Apr 23 '17 at 06:41

Yaron

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Doesn't work if there is a directory. Says `md5sum: /path_to_dir: Is a directory` – Anwar Apr 23 '17 at 06:53
@Anwar running `md5sum /path_to_dir/*` will execute `md5sum` on every file in the directory – Yaron Apr 23 '17 at 07:23
1

What about the other files inside subdirectories? – Anwar Apr 23 '17 at 07:25
1

@Anwar - it won't work on sub-directories (which was defined as *nice to have* in the question) – Yaron Apr 23 '17 at 07:27
1

but I see this added to the edition, **this is sort of important** – Anwar Apr 23 '17 at 07:32
This doesn't answer the question at all. – ABCD May 09 '18 at 00:46
this is all wrong. – george Feb 27 '21 at 02:13

How can I recursively list Md5sum of all the files in a directory and its subdirectories?

2 Answers2