Sum (Unix)

sum
Original author(s)Ken Thompson
Developer(s)AT&T Bell Laboratories
Initial releaseNovember 3, 1971; 53 years ago (1971-11-03)
Operating systemUnix, Unix-like, Inferno
PlatformCross-platform
TypeCommand
Licensecoreutils: GPLv3+

sum is a legacy utility available on some Unix and Unix-like operating systems. This utility outputs a 16-bit checksum of each argument file, as well as the number of blocks they take on disk.[1] Two different checksum algorithms are in use. POSIX abandoned sum in favor of cksum.

  1. ^ sum(1) — manual pages from GNU coreutils