ExifTool Forum

ExifTool => Bug Reports / Feature Requests => Topic started by: sebutzu on January 05, 2025, 04:07:09 AM

Title: Feature request - total file MD5
Post by: sebutzu on January 05, 2025, 04:07:09 AM
Would it be possible to have an Extra tag (computed) = MD5 of the input file.
What I am trying to achieve is to do a one pass on the files that I import in my library, and need to have ImageDataHash (to be able to detect duplicates) but also MD5 of the total file to be able to detect changes in Metadata. I assume anyhow when computing ImageDataHash exiftool probably scans the entire file, so computing also MD5 for the entire file would not make it slower.
Of course I can easily compute this outside exiftool, but that would mean I would go another time through all the content of the file using another tool.
Title: Re: Feature request - total file MD5
Post by: Phil Harvey on January 05, 2025, 04:48:45 PM
Generating an md5 for the entire file would require reading the entire file again.  I don't see this as something that makes sense to add since this would be a very uncommonly used feature and there are other utilities that can easily do this.

- Phil