On 29/01/15 16:11, Terry Hoye wrote:
> 
> Regarding GNU coreutils 8.12.197-032bb    September 2011,
> man md5sum states in part:
> [quote]
> The sums are computed as described in RFC  1321.   When  checking,  the
> input  should  be a former output of this program.  The default mode is
> to print a line with checksum, a character  indicating  type  (`*'  for
> binary, ` ' for text), and name for each FILE.[/quote]
> 
> I think I am correct in the following observation:
> Taken literally, the second sentence is incorrect. The default mode has
> two characters, often both spaces, between the two stringsets.

True.
The attached should make this more accurate.

> I don't think the algorithm works correctly with only one space between the stringsets.

Well --check still works in this case as it's switching
to "bsd reversed" mode. I.E. supporting the output from `md5 -r` etc.
I've made this clearer also, in the info docs.

thanks,
Pádraig.