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

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