---
page_title: filesha512 - Functions - Configuration Language
description: |-
  The filesha512 function computes the SHA512 hash of the contents of
  a given file and encodes it as hex.
---

# `filesha512` function reference

This topic provides reference information about the `filesha512` function, which calculates the SHA-512 hash of a file's contents. 

## Introduction

The `filesha512` is a variant of [`sha512`](/terraform/language/functions/sha512)
that hashes the contents of a given file rather than a literal string.

This is similar to `sha512(file(filename))`, but
because [`file`](/terraform/language/functions/file) accepts only UTF-8 text it cannot be used to
create hashes for binary files.

## Syntax

Use the `filesha512` function with the following syntax:

```hcl
filesha512(path)
```

The `path` is the relative or absolute file path to the file whose SHA-512 hash you want to compute.

In the following example, the function returns the SHA-512 value of `example.txt`.

```hcl
$ filesha512("example.txt")
861844d6704e8573fec34d967e20bcfe6e061b3348b3b0c7e9b7c6a482f6f15a48bffd0fb928fd8c9f9196f7a8596d5e32b45d5a25488a8499396a67442c1d76
```

## Example use case

In the following example, the `filesha512` function computes the SHA-512 hash of the file `example.txt` located in the current module's directory.

```hcl
output "file_hash" {
  value = filesha512("example.txt")
}
```

## Related functions

- [`sha512`](/terraform/language/functions/sha512) computes the SHA-512 hash of a given string and encodes it with hexadecimal digits.
- [`filesha256`](/terraform/language/functions/filesha256) computes the SHA-1 hash of a given file and encodes it with hexadecimal digits.
- [`filesha1`](/terraform/language/functions/filesha1)computes the SHA-1 hash of a given file and encodes it with hexadecimal digits.