I was taken by surprise by the following output from md5sum: $ ls -Glg special/ total 8 -rw-r--r-- 1 144 Oct 24 2014 'C:\nppdf32Log\debuglog.txt' -rw-r--r-- 1 144 Oct 24 2014 same-contents $ echo special/* special/C:\nppdf32Log\debuglog.txt special/same-contents $ md5sum special/* \adfc1d2f1b1d6c7fcaa51e857c1a6f68 special/C:\\nppdf32Log\\debuglog.txt adfc1d2f1b1d6c7fcaa51e857c1a6f68 special/same-contents $ md5sum special/* | hex 00000000 5c 61 64 66 63 31 64 32 66 31 62 31 64 36 63 37 |\adfc1d2f1b1d6c7| 00000010 66 63 61 61 35 31 65 38 35 37 63 31 61 36 66 36 |fcaa51e857c1a6f6| 00000020 38 20 20 73 70 65 63 69 61 6c 2f 43 3a 5c 5c 6e |8 special/C:\\n| 00000030 70 70 64 66 33 32 4c 6f 67 5c 5c 64 65 62 75 67 |ppdf32Log\\debug| 00000040 6c 6f 67 2e 74 78 74 0a 61 64 66 63 31 64 32 66 |log.txt.adfc1d2f| 00000050 31 62 31 64 36 63 37 66 63 61 61 35 31 65 38 35 |1b1d6c7fcaa51e85| 00000060 37 63 31 61 36 66 36 38 20 20 73 70 65 63 69 61 |7c1a6f68 specia| 00000070 6c 2f 73 61 6d 65 2d 63 6f 6e 74 65 6e 74 73 0a |l/same-contents.| 00000080 $
I don't understand why it pollutes the first field in its output. I would have thought it sufficient to mangle the filename if it feels it has to (echo doesn't bother). Cheers, David.