64

I tried to generate the MD5 sum (using md5sum) of a string, "hello". I tried out different methods as the md5sum tool in Linux, PHP's MD5() function as well as various online text to md5sum translators.

echo "hello" | md5sum

and

echo "hello" > file && md5sum file

Gave the result b1946ac92492d2347c6235b4d2611184. However, PHP's md5() function and almost all online generators gave the output 5D41402ABC4B2A76B9719D911017C592.

What is the reason?

Peter Mortensen
  • 12,326
Himanshu Shekhar
  • 820

2 Answers2

99

@Cyrus's answer is exactly on point with how to resolve this - to explain, when using echo it will output a newline at the end of the string. As you can see on this online output, hello with a newline outputs exactly the MD5 you were getting previously. Using -n suppresses the newline, and will then give you the result you expected.

enter image description here

Edit:

You can see it clearly if you output it to hexdump, which shows the hexadecimal of the bytes there.

$ echo "str_example" | hd
00000000  73 74 72 5f 65 78 61 6d  70 6c 65 0a              |str_example.|

See the 0a (\n) in the end of the string

$ echo -n "str_example" | hd
00000000  73 74 72 5f 65 78 61 6d  70 6c 65                 |str_example|

With -n echo doesn't put a new line (\n) in the end

Now with a empty string

$ echo  "" | hd
00000000  0a                                                |.|

Just the New Line character

$ echo -n  "" | hd

Empty string, so hexdump shows no output

Jakuje
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Jonno
  • 21,643
88

By default, echo includes a newline character at the end of the output. However, PHP and the online sites you used do not include the newline. To suppress the newline character, use the -n flag:

echo -n "hello" | md5sum

Output:

5d41402abc4b2a76b9719d911017c592  -

See: help echo

or with printf:

printf "%s" "hello" | md5sum
Cyrus
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