I assume it's impossible, but maybe I am wrong...

Is it possible for a container to contain the hash of its own content?

For example, a document (PDF or any format) states among other things:
"The md5 hash of this document is ed4f489876105b369cc7628fc3841579"

Then you run the file/document through md5sum and get ed4f489876105b369cc7628fc3841579.

Or a program/script/executable that prints out its own hash.

It could be md5 or any other hash algorithm.

Is there a way to lock a drawer with the key inside?

Note: I found just a few discussions on Google and found them all not clear enough or conclusive.

You can write a prog/script that will generate it's own hash as output, but if you put the result back inside the file as a literal, that will of course change the file's hash.

HTH

The only way to avoid this would be to write the algorithm to search the data for an occurrence of the known hash-string, or perhaps for a set of markers surrounding it, and to omit those bytes from the hash calculation: hashing first the bytes leading up to the marker, then the bytes following it.

Interesting idea! I would never think of that. Thank you.

It's possible in the sense that there is some string which you could append to "The md5 hash of this document is ed4f489876105b369cc7628fc3841579" in order to make the statement true. However, finding the string for existing cryptographic algorithms is intractible (finding it would constitute a successful Preimage attack). It should be doable with crc32 or something like that though.

Well, that, at least...