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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HADOOP-3941?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=12625847#action_12625847
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Tsz Wo (Nicholas), SZE commented on HADOOP-3941:
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> ... so returning null seems a better choice than an exception here. Another 
> option might be to return a trivial checksum, e.g., the file's length.

I think returning null make sense.  We cannot return a trivial checksum since 
an algorithm is specified in the call.  We should only return the checksum 
generated by the specified algorithm.

> Should we extend distcp to use this? 

Yes, the canonical application is distcp.   I could also change distcp to use 
the new API.

> Extend FileSystem API to return file-checksums/file-digests
> -----------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: HADOOP-3941
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/HADOOP-3941
>             Project: Hadoop Core
>          Issue Type: New Feature
>          Components: fs
>            Reporter: Tsz Wo (Nicholas), SZE
>         Attachments: 3941_20080818.patch, 3941_20080819.patch, 
> 3941_20080819b.patch, 3941_20080820.patch
>
>
> Suppose we have two files in two locations (may be two clusters) and these 
> two files have the same size.  How could we tell whether the content of them 
> are the same?
> Currently, the only way is to read both files and compare the content of 
> them.  This is a very expensive operation if the files are huge.
> So, we would like to extend the FileSystem API to support returning 
> file-checksums/file-digests.

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