If you are writing binary data to a file, try to set binmode (OUTSUMFILE), and also to the file you are reading from. This is necessary under operating systems like Windows that treat binary and ascii-files in a different way. IIRC, under Linux or Unix there won't be any difference.

Md5: is it possible for you to use the hex digests? They are rather easy to deal with, e.g.

use Digest::MD5;

sub GetMD5Digest {
    return (&Digest::MD5::md5_hex($_[0]));
} # GetMD5Digest
[download]

or, if you want to get it in a more "human" readable form, you could enhance it about like in the following example:

use Digest::MD5;

sub GetMD5Digest { # former known as md5Hash
    my $digest = &Digest::MD5::md5_hex($_[0]);

    # split up by pairs, eg. aab23f => aa b2 3f
    $digest =~ s/([A-Za-z0-f][A-Za-z0-f])/$1 /g;
    chop($digest);

    return ($digest);
} # GetMD5Digest
[download]

Best regards,
perl -e "s>>*F>e=>y)\*martinF)stronat)=>print,print v8.8.8.32.11.32"