Checksum 1.3 Users Manual

Checksum for the Macintosh User’s Manual Version 1.3 © Copyright Geoff Walsh 1993–1996 - All rights reserved Topics • Introduction • System Requirements • Trademarks • License Agreement and Registration Information • The Status Window Display • Usage • Menus • Version History • Future enhancements • Questions or Problems? • Registration Introduction Welcome to Checksum for the Macintosh, a complete file checksum program. Checksum is a program that allows anyone to quickly and easily calculate file checksums. Briefly, a checksum is a number calculated for a file by performing some operation on all the characters in the file, such as adding up all the character values and generating a total. A checksum is useful for testing the integrity of a file — the calculated checksum can either be compared against a previously calculated checksum, or the checksum can be compared against a checksum for a file on another computer. Checksum is the easiest way to compare two files on Macintosh computers (either on the same machine or different ones), to tell if they are identical or not! If the checksum values match, there is an extremely good chance the files are identical. The choice of checksum algorithm affects the chance that two files are identical if their checksums match. Some of the key features of Checksum are: • Most popular checksum algorithms are supported • Checksum is compatible with most checksum programs on other systems, e.g., the Unix “sum” program and the POSIX.2 “cksum” Checksum for the Macintosh User’s Manual 1 Version 1.3 • Checksum can specially treat ‘TEXT’ file end-of-line characters to be compatible with Unix or MS-DOS systems • Checksum is fully System 7 and 32 bit addressing compatible, including Apple Events, balloon help and “drag and drop” • Checksum can calculate checksums for files, folders, volumes and even alias files • Checksum is business-ware — free for individuals and for education, but organizations must pay if they use it The results from Checksum are displayed in a window on the screen. Results can be copied to the Clipboard to use in other applications. Checksum for the Macintosh User’s Manual 2 Version 1.3 System Requirements Checksum will run on a Mac Plus or later. System 6 or System 7 is required. Trademarks Apple and Macintosh are registered trademarks of Apple Corp. Unix ™ is a registered trademark of Unix System Laboratories, Inc. MS-DOS® is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corp. Sun OS and Solaris are registered trademarks of Sun Microsystems The MD5 Message-Digest Algorithm is by RSA Data S…