A note on vendor reaction speed to the e=3 problem

[Greg Rose]

At 14:33  -0400 2006/09/28, Leichter, Jerry wrote:
>|
>VMS has for years had a simple CHECKSUM command, which had a variant,
>CHECKSUM/IMAGE, applicable only to executable image files.  It knew
>enough about the syntax of executables to skip over irrelevant metadata
>like link date and time.  (The checksums computed weren't cryptographic
>- at least the last time I used it, many years ago.  The command was
>created to use in patches to provide a quick verification that the file
>being patched was "the right one".)  I've always found it surprising
>that no one seems to have developed similar tools for Unix - with the
>Gnu libraries for portable access to object/ executable files, it could
>be done relatively easily.

The "sum" command has existed in Unixes since before VMS existed. 
Checksum has too many characters in the name ;-).

Greg.


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