Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!cmcl2!brl-adm!brl-smoke!gwyn
From: gwyn@brl-smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn )
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Sum history
Message-ID: <7222@brl-smoke.ARPA>
Date: 8 Feb 88 14:08:04 GMT
References: <1451@quacky.mips.COM>
Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) <gwyn>)
Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD.
Lines: 13

In article <1451@quacky.mips.COM> dce@mips.COM (David Elliott) writes:
>Does anyone know why sum on System V-based systems produces
>different results by default than sum on BSD-based systems?

Because they evolved by different paths (but I bet you knew that).
I think somebody decided that "sums the bytes in a file" should be
taken literally.

>I notice also that System V sum has a -r option for using an
>alternate algorithm, which generates the same results as the
>BSD sum.

Yes, use that flavor for checksum purposes.