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
}