Sum history

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <1451 at quacky.mips.COM> dce at 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.