bug#77934: bug: md5sum: Escaped backslashes in filename got in stdout

tag 77934 notabug
close 77934
stop

On 20/04/2025 00:44, William Johnson via GNU coreutils Bug Reports wrote:
> Hello. I would like to report a bug for md5sum coreutil.
> If filename has ‘\t’ in filename, stdout for md5sum result will start with backslash symbol.
>   
> *  My version of md5sum util:
> md5sum --version
> md5sum (GNU coreutils) 8.32
>   
> *  Set of commands to reproduce:
> $ touch hello
> $ touch hello\t\\t\\\t\\\\t
> $ md5sum ./*
> d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e  ./hello
> \d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e  ./hellot\\t\\t\\\\t
>   
> *  Expected no backshash symbol in stdout line 2. This is not  a big deal as files with backslashes in names are rare, but if someone process md5sums with regexp this case might ruin their work. Theoretically.
> Thank you.

That's expected and documented behavior.
Consider using --zero for programmatic use of these utilities,
in which case the escaping is not used (required).

cheers,
Pádraig