On Dec 22, 2007 8:33 AM, Robert P. J. Day <rpjday@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > frequently, i want to get the version number of a command to see if > it's new enough for what i need, but there doesn't seem to be any > GNU-wide standard for that. > > for example, if i want to know what version of "ls" i have, i can > do: > > $ ls --version > ls (GNU coreutils) 6.9 > Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc. > This is free software. You may redistribute copies of it under the > terms of > the GNU General Public License <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>. > There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. > > Written by Richard Stallman and David MacKenzie. > $ > > well, that's useful, but if all i'm after is the version number, i > have to run that through head, and strip the first part of the line to > get to the value i want, which is just "6.9". > > "gcc" at least supports the "-dumpversion" option: > > $ gcc -dumpversion > 4.1.2 > $ > > is there a reason there's no single GNU-standard option that simply > gives you that version number, so you can avoid all the head'ing and > sed'ing to get to it? > > rday > -- > > ======================================================================== > Robert P. J. Day > Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry > Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA > > http://crashcourse.ca > ======================================================================== Not at my Linux box so can't validate this, but could you get it from rpm -qa | grep {command_name}? Doesn't the rpm package name always contain the version number? If so at least the format would be more standardized thus easier to parse. Jacques B.
