You might compare many words at once (say from a popular password list such as rockyou) like this: while read line; do echo -n $line | sha1sum | cut -c6-40 | a

You might compare many words at once (say from a popular password list such as rockyou) like this: while read line; do echo -n $line | sha1sum | cut -c6-40 | awk '{print "00000" $0}'; done < rockyou.txt I haven't tested that, but I think it'll work.