[Cryptography] let's do something intelligent about md5sum!

[Jonathan Thornburg]

On Sat, Jun 13, 2015 at 02:18:36PM -0700, John Denker wrote:
> Therefore I suggest that rather than focusing on
> b2sum, we should be thinking in terms of a
>    chksum
> package that takes a grown-up approach to the 
> life-cycle issue:
>   -- It should know what to do with a legacy md5sum.
>   -- It should know how to generate something better
>    if-and-when possible.
>   -- It should function correctly during the
>    transition periods between generations.
>   -- That includes recognizing that it, too, will 
>    have to be phased out at some point!
>   -- It may have to be a package of things, not
>    a just a single program.

Given the existing confusion with multiple incompatible 'sum' and
'echo' commands (e.g., SysV vs BSD), perhaps it would be wise to choose
a name that isn't quite so easily confused with the POSIX.1 'cksum'
command
  http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695299/utilities/cksum.html
(which computes a CRC-32)?

-- 
-- "Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]" <jthorn at astro.indiana-zebra.edu>
   Dept of Astronomy & IUCSS, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, USA
   "There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched
    at any given moment.  How often, or on what system, the Thought Police
    plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork.  It was even conceivable
    that they watched everybody all the time."  -- George Orwell, "1984"