#!/usr/bin/env python import os import mmap import md5 fn = 'bigfile' f=open(fn, 'wb') f.write('hi') f.seek(2**30) f.write('foo') f.seek(2**31) f.write('bar') f.seek(2**32) f.write('baz') f.close() size = os.path.getsize(fn) f = open(fn, 'rb') m = mmap.mmap(f.fileno(), size, access=mmap.ACCESS_READ) print 'python mmap md5:', md5.md5(m).hexdigest() os.system('md5sum -b %s' % fn)