Subject: bug#64390: cksum: cannot --check untagged sums file

From: Christoph Anton Mitterer <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 01 Jul 2023 02:00:11 +0200

Hey.

At least as of 9.1 (on Debian), it seems that cksum cannot --check a
sums file in the untagged style:

$ touch a b
$ cksum -a sha512 --tag * > sums.tagged
$ cksum -a sha512 --untagged * > sums.untagged

$ cat sums.tagged 
SHA512 (a) = cf83e1357eefb8bdf1542850d66d8007d620e4050b5715dc83f4a921d36ce9ce47d0d13c5d85f2b0ff8318d2877eec2f63b931bd47417a81a538327af927da3e
SHA512 (b) = cf83e1357eefb8bdf1542850d66d8007d620e4050b5715dc83f4a921d36ce9ce47d0d13c5d85f2b0ff8318d2877eec2f63b931bd47417a81a538327af927da3e
$ cat sums.untagged 
cf83e1357eefb8bdf1542850d66d8007d620e4050b5715dc83f4a921d36ce9ce47d0d13c5d85f2b0ff8318d2877eec2f63b931bd47417a81a538327af927da3e  a
cf83e1357eefb8bdf1542850d66d8007d620e4050b5715dc83f4a921d36ce9ce47d0d13c5d85f2b0ff8318d2877eec2f63b931bd47417a81a538327af927da3e  b
3423932033d74d924ebe77f281d9694b1fa98103ed38b4634a06759c08b63a4fd96783dfaae8e1acedc53e36129d461a5757ccf3903f5bf64242cd78d305c473  sums.tagged

$ cksum -c sums.tagged 
a: OK
b: OK

$ cksum -c sums.untagged 
cksum: sums.untagged: no properly formatted checksum lines found
$ cksum -c sums.untagged --tag
cksum: sums.untagged: no properly formatted checksum lines found
$ cksum -c sums.untagged --untagged
cksum: sums.untagged: no properly formatted checksum lines found
$ 

Not sure whether it should try to auto-determine the format...
I guess it would be possible, as long as no algorithm name every uses
a-zA-Z0-9 as starting letter.
But I rather tend to think it would be a bad idea to do so.

However, it should be possibl to use --tag or --untagged to specify a
format.

Thanks,
Chris.