bug#20407: Doubt on md5 case sensitivity

[Bob Proulx]

Indranil Chowdhury wrote:
> Is the md5 checksum comparison case sensitive? Or is it not? I did not find
> the answer in your manuals. Could you please let me know in a short reply?

The comparison of the md5sum is case insensitive.  The md5sum is a
value encoded in hexadecimal.  Case is insignificant in a hexadecimal
value.

You can prove this to yourself by trying an experiment.

  /tmp$ echo a > /tmp/a
  /tmp$ md5sum /tmp/a > /tmp/a.md5sum
  /tmp$ cat /tmp/a.md5sum
  60b725f10c9c85c70d97880dfe8191b3  /tmp/a
  /tmp$ md5sum -c /tmp/a.md5sum
  /tmp/a: OK
  /tmp$ awk '{print toupper($1), $2}' /tmp/a.md5sum
  60B725F10C9C85C70D97880DFE8191B3 /tmp/a
  /tmp$ awk '{print toupper($1), $2}' /tmp/a.md5sum | md5sum -c -
  /tmp/a: OK

Please ask questions on the address@hidden mailing list rather than
in the bug tracker.

Bob