How to compare two strings in dot separated version format in Bash?

Question

Is there any way to compare such strings on bash, e.g.: 2.4.5 and 2.8 and 2.4.5.1?

Answer 1

I came across and solved this problem, to add an additional (and shorter and simpler) answer...

First note, extended shell comparison failed as you may already know...

    if [[ 1.2.0 < 1.12.12 ]]; then echo true; else echo false; fi
    false

Using the sort -t'.'-g (or sort -V as mentioned by kanaka) to order versions and simple bash string comparison I found a solution. The input file contains versions in columns 3 and 4 which I want to compare. This iterates through the list identifying a match or if one is greater than the other. Hope this may still help anyone looking to do this using bash as simple as possible.

while read l
do
    #Field 3 contains version on left to compare (change -f3 to required column).
    kf=$(echo $l | cut -d ' ' -f3)
    #Field 4 contains version on right to compare (change -f4 to required column).
    mp=$(echo $l | cut -d ' ' -f4)

    echo 'kf = '$kf
    echo 'mp = '$mp

    #To compare versions m.m.m the two can be listed and sorted with a . separator and the greater version found.
    gv=$(echo -e $kf'\n'$mp | sort -t'.' -g | tail -n 1)

    if [ $kf = $mp ]; then 
        echo 'Match Found: '$l
    elif [ $kf = $gv ]; then
        echo 'Karaf feature file version is greater '$l
    elif [ $mp = $gv ]; then
        echo 'Maven pom file version is greater '$l
   else
       echo 'Comparison error '$l
   fi
done < features_and_pom_versions.tmp.txt

Thanks to Barry's blog for the sort idea... ref: http://bkhome.org/blog/?viewDetailed=02199