---
page_title: filemd5 - Functions - Configuration Language
description: |-
  The filemd5 function computes the MD5 hash of the contents of
  a given file and encodes it as hex.
---

# `filemd5` Function

`filemd5` is a variant of [`md5`](/terraform/language/functions/md5)
that hashes the contents of a given file rather than a literal string.

This is similar to `md5(file(filename))`, but
because [`file`](/terraform/language/functions/file) accepts only UTF-8 text it cannot be used to
create hashes for binary files.

Collision attacks have been successfully performed against this hashing
function. Before using this function for anything security-sensitive, refer to
[RFC 6151](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6151) for updated security
considerations applying to the MD5 algorithm.
