[Nottingham] 1GB of \0 (aka null)

[Duncan John Fyfe]

On Mon, 2006-03-27 at 14:30 +0100, Martin wrote:
> Richard Hayes wrote:
> [---]
> > I'm doing some online Linux proficiency tests, and one of the questions
> > is:
> 
> 'Ere! Are we doing your homework for you?
> Do we get a share of the prize? ;-)
> 
> > Calculate the sha1sum hash of 1GB of \0 characters (aka zeros, nulls etc).
> > 
> > That's the whole question! They're all quite tricky, in their actual 
> > difficulty
> > and their ambiguity.

I think your ambiguity is ambiguous :)

> 
> Oh. That one's easy:
> 
> dd if=/dev/zero count=2M | sha1sum
> 
> 2a492f15396a6768bcbca016993f4b4c8b0b5307

> 
> Now, whom can answer that in fewer characters and how?

Not shorter, but faster:
	dd if=/dev/zero count=131072 bs=8192 | sha1sum


Have fun,
Duncan