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 observatiion:

Taken literally, the second sentence is incorrect. The default mode has

two characters, often both spaces, between the two stringsets.

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

Regards,

TJ Hoye