Getting the SHA-1 (or MD5) hash of a directory

Allows you to "fingerprint" a directory and tell if anything has changed in it

By definition a cryptographic hash is, "a deterministic procedure that takes an arbitrary block of data and returns a fixed-size bit string, the (cryptographic) hash value, such that an accidental or intentional change to the data will change the hash value".

Usually these hashes are used on files to "fingerprint" them, but in order to do the same to a directory you have to do something like this:

# http://akiscode.com/articles/sha-1directoryhash.shtml
# Copyright (c) 2009 Stephen Akiki
# MIT License (Means you can do whatever you want with this)
#  See http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php
# Error Codes:
#   -1 -> Directory does not exist
#   -2 -> General error (see stack traceback)

def GetHashofDirs(directory, verbose=0):
  import hashlib, os
  SHAhash = hashlib.sha1()
  if not os.path.exists (directory):
    return -1

  try:
    for root, dirs, files in os.walk(directory):
      for names in files:
        if verbose == 1:
          print 'Hashing', names
        filepath = os.path.join(root,names)
        try:
          f1 = open(filepath, 'rb')
        except:
          # You can't open the file for some reason
          f1.close()
          continue

	while 1:
	  # Read file in as little chunks
  	  buf = f1.read(4096)
	  if not buf : break
	  SHAhash.update(hashlib.sha1(buf).hexdigest())
        f1.close()

  except:
    import traceback
    # Print the stack traceback
    traceback.print_exc()
    return -2

  return SHAhash.hexdigest()

print GetHashofDirs('My Documents', 1)