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 implemented a function that returns the same results as Dennis Williamson's but uses fewer lines. It does perform a sanity check initially which causes 1..0 to fail from his tests (which I would argue should be the case) but all of his other tests pass with this code:

#!/bin/bash
version_compare() {
    if [[ $1 =~ ^([0-9]+\.?)+$ && $2 =~ ^([0-9]+\.?)+$ ]]; then
        local l=(${1//./ }) r=(${2//./ }) s=${#l[@]}; [[ ${#r[@]} -gt ${#l[@]} ]] && s=${#r[@]}

        for i in $(seq 0 $((s - 1))); do
            [[ ${l[$i]} -gt ${r[$i]} ]] && return 1
            [[ ${l[$i]} -lt ${r[$i]} ]] && return 2
        done

        return 0
    else
        echo "Invalid version number given"
        exit 1
    fi
}

Answer 2

This is for at most 4 fields in the version.

$ function ver { printf "%03d%03d%03d%03d" $(echo "$1" | tr '.' ' '); }
$ [ $(ver 10.9) -lt $(ver 10.10) ] && echo hello  
hello

Answer 3

if it's just about to know whether one version is lower than another I came up checking whether sort --version-sort changes the order of my version strings:

    string="$1
$2"
    [ "$string" == "$(sort --version-sort <<< "$string")" ]

Answer 4

Here is a simple Bash function that uses no external commands. It works for version strings that have up to three numeric parts in them - less than 3 is fine as well. It can easily be extended for more. It implements =, <, <=, >, >=, and != conditions.

#!/bin/bash
vercmp() {
    version1=$1 version2=$2 condition=$3

    IFS=. v1_array=($version1) v2_array=($version2)
    v1=$((v1_array[0] * 100 + v1_array[1] * 10 + v1_array[2]))
    v2=$((v2_array[0] * 100 + v2_array[1] * 10 + v2_array[2]))
    diff=$((v2 - v1))
    [[ $condition = '='  ]] && ((diff == 0)) && return 0
    [[ $condition = '!=' ]] && ((diff != 0)) && return 0
    [[ $condition = '<'  ]] && ((diff >  0)) && return 0
    [[ $condition = '<=' ]] && ((diff >= 0)) && return 0
    [[ $condition = '>'  ]] && ((diff <  0)) && return 0
    [[ $condition = '>=' ]] && ((diff <= 0)) && return 0
    return 1
}

Here is the test:

for tv1 in '*' 1.1.1 2.5.3 7.3.0 0.5.7 10.3.9 8.55.32 0.0.1; do
    for tv2 in 3.1.1 1.5.3 4.3.0 0.0.7 0.3.9 11.55.32 10.0.0 '*'; do
      for c in '=' '>' '<' '>=' '<=' '!='; do
        vercmp "$tv1" "$tv2" "$c" && printf '%s\n' "$tv1 $c $tv2 is true" || printf '%s\n' "$tv1 $c $tv2 is false"
      done
    done
done

A subset of the test output:

<snip>

* >= * is true
* <= * is true
* != * is true
1.1.1 = 3.1.1 is false
1.1.1 > 3.1.1 is false
1.1.1 < 3.1.1 is true
1.1.1 >= 3.1.1 is false
1.1.1 <= 3.1.1 is true
1.1.1 != 3.1.1 is true
1.1.1 = 1.5.3 is false
1.1.1 > 1.5.3 is false
1.1.1 < 1.5.3 is true
1.1.1 >= 1.5.3 is false
1.1.1 <= 1.5.3 is true
1.1.1 != 1.5.3 is true
1.1.1 = 4.3.0 is false
1.1.1 > 4.3.0 is false

<snip>

Answer 5

You can recursively split on . and compare as shown in the following algorithm, taken from here. It returns 10 if the versions are the same, 11 if version 1 is greater than version 2 and 9 otherwise.

#!/bin/bash
do_version_check() {

   [ "$1" == "$2" ] && return 10

   ver1front=`echo $1 | cut -d "." -f -1`
   ver1back=`echo $1 | cut -d "." -f 2-`

   ver2front=`echo $2 | cut -d "." -f -1`
   ver2back=`echo $2 | cut -d "." -f 2-`

   if [ "$ver1front" != "$1" ] || [ "$ver2front" != "$2" ]; then
       [ "$ver1front" -gt "$ver2front" ] && return 11
       [ "$ver1front" -lt "$ver2front" ] && return 9

       [ "$ver1front" == "$1" ] || [ -z "$ver1back" ] && ver1back=0
       [ "$ver2front" == "$2" ] || [ -z "$ver2back" ] && ver2back=0
       do_version_check "$ver1back" "$ver2back"
       return $?
   else
           [ "$1" -gt "$2" ] && return 11 || return 9
   fi
}    

do_version_check "$1" "$2"

Source

Answer 6

For old version/busybox sort. Simple form provide roughly result and often works.

sort -n

This is escpecial useful on version which contains alpha symbols like

10.c.3
10.a.4
2.b.5