When you download software online often the publisher will also provide a file hash to make sure that the file hasn’t been modified or hacked outside of their control. This is important to use because often the download file is hosted separately then the hash and the has is more controlled. SHA and md5 are the most frequently used algorithms for hash sum checking. The below examples will work on most Linux, Mac, and Unix systems.
Run SHA 256 Checksum On File
shasum -a 256 downloaded_file.zip
455c766a6cbe8c2a69cd6b4f0d1e10d9b6cde696a81fa27e3357d63092d02237 downloaded_file.zip
Run SHA 1 Checksum On File
shasum -a 1 downloaded_file.zip
67974c750bb2a500a880f19a95e4fc4b574e7015 downloaded_file.zip