Guide - Comparing Hashes Using HashPython

Comparing hashes when trying to organize folders can come in handy if you accidentally duplicated files. The algorithms behind hashes make it so that even if a single character is the only difference between two files then the hashes generated from those files will be completely different.

If you already downloaded the HashPython application from the Projects portal you should now set up the environment path for your command prompt to directly access it.

  • in the Windows search bar type “env” and click “Edit the system environment variables”

  • click on “Environment Variables” at the bottom

  • double click on the “Path” variable under “User variables for x”

  • click “New” on the right

  • now paste in the location of the HashPython.exe

  • click “Ok” to close out each window that was opened up and you should now be set

  • open a command prompt and type “hashpython.exe”

  • wait a moment and it should pop up

    • Now you can easily open the app through the command prompt instead of having to find the executable in a folder or on your desktop. An example use case is if you’ve saved multiple editions of a file that end up having the same file size and can’t directly tell if they are different or not. Run the hashpython app and compare the two files. If they are the same you can throw out one of the duplicates. Easy.