What is file hashing in python?

A hash is a function that converts a variable length sequence of bytes to a fixed length sequence.

Hashing files can be advantageous for many reasons. Hashes can be used to check if two files are identical or verify that the contents of a file haven't been corrupted or changed.

You can use hashlib to generate a hash for a file:

import hashlib

hasher = hashlib.new('sha256')
with open('myfile', 'r') as f:
      contents = f.read()
      hasher.update(contents)

print hasher.hexdigest()