Python Program to Find Hash of File

In this example, we will write a python program to find the hash of a file. Hash is used in the cryptography to encrypt the content of a file. The output of the function is called the digest message. There are many hashing functions like MD5, SHA-1 etc. You can find the hash of a file using the hashlib library. Note that file sizes can be pretty big. It is best to use a buffer to load chunks and process them to calculate the hash of the file. You can take a buffer of any size. To better understand this example, make sure you have knowledge of the following tutorials:-

• Python File Operation
• Python for Loop Statements
• Python Functions

Let us write a program to find hash of a “hello.txt” file

import hashlib

BUF_SIZE = 32768 # Read file in 32kb chunks
md5 = hashlib.md5()
sha1 = hashlib.sha1()
with open('hello.txt', 'rb') as f:

    while True:
       data = f.read(BUF_SIZE)
       if not data:
          break
       md5.update(data)
       sha1.update(data)

    print("MD5: {0}".format(md5.hexdigest()))
    print("SHA1: {0}".format(sha1.hexdigest()))

The output of the program is:-