I often compute checksums of files downloaded from the Internet, using shasum family of commands, without paying attention to the mode for reading. In particular, sha1sum usually defaults to text mode for applications.
What is the difference between reading in text mode and binary mode, when checking checksums using sha1sum?
~/Downloads$ sha1sum --help
Usage: sha1sum [OPTION]... [FILE]...
Print or check SHA1 (160-bit) checksums.
With no FILE, or when FILE is -, read standard input.
-b, --binary read in binary mode
-c, --check read SHA1 sums from the FILEs and check them
--tag create a BSD-style checksum
-t, --text read in text mode (default)
-z, --zero end each output line with NUL, not newline,
and disable file name escaping
The following five options are useful only when verifying checksums:
--ignore-missing don't fail or report status for missing files
--quiet don't print OK for each successfully verified file
--status don't output anything, status code shows success
--strict exit non-zero for improperly formatted checksum lines
-w, --warn warn about improperly formatted checksum lines
--help display this help and exit
--version output version information and exit
The sums are computed as described in FIPS-180-1. When checking, the input
should be a former output of this program. The default mode is to print a
line with checksum, a space, a character indicating input mode ('*' for binary,
' ' for text or where binary is insignificant), and name for each FILE.
GNU coreutils online help: <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/>
Full documentation <https://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/sha1sum>
or available locally via: info '(coreutils) sha1sum invocation'
None.
At least judging by the answer to the similar question on the difference between text and binary in md5sum.
It appears it flags are for standards compliance or something