Re: Don't you think there are too many *sum utilities?

[Alfred M. Szmidt]

   > I don't see any major problem why something like `hashsum
   > ALGORITHM' wouldn't work though, `md5sum' could be the same as
   > `hashsum md5'.  And then md5sum could be a shell script, or just
   > a simple program that calls `hashsum md5'.

   Except that since the *sum utilities operate on arbitrary files,
   you would need it to be `hashsum --md5', ie. make the algorithm an
   option rather than the first argument.

Why not just: hashsum ALGORITHM [FILE]? A optional hashing algorithm
seems pointless for this.