pycksum - A Python implementation of the cksum algorithm

The cksum algorithm generates a checksum for a stream of data. While cksum is not cryptographically strong, it can be used to validate the integrity of transferred files.

Pycksum includes a pure Python implementation of cksum as well as an efficient C extension that will automatically be used on platforms that support it.

Installation

Install from PyPi using pip, a package manager for Python:

$ pip install pycksum

Examples

The simplest way to use pycksum is to just give it a string:

import pycksum
ck = pycksum.cksum("Any string")

You can pass in a file or an iterable:

ck = pycksum.cksum( open("filename"))

ck = pycksum.cksum( ["This", "love", "is", "taking", "its", "toll", "on me"])

If you have a lot of data to process, it's more memory-efficient to calculate the cksum incrementally:

c = pycksum.Cksum()
for data in input_fd:
    c.add(data)
ck = c.get_cksum()
sz = c.get_size()