So, lets say you have downloaded the SHA256SUMS files. This file contains the sha256sum for multiple files and you want to compare the values for only one or some of them, then the simplest thing you can do is:

sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS

Now, with this if you do not have some files present then you might get some errors and if you do not want that, then you can try this:

grep <filename> SHA256SUMS|tee /proc/self/fd/2|sha256sum --check -

And now if you have some files under some subdirectories as well and you want to generate the SHA256SUMS file, then the simplest is to use this:

sha256sum $(find . -type f -exec echo {} \+ )
###OR
sha256sum $(find . -type f)

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