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'm using embedded Linux (Yocto) with BusyBox. BusyBox sort doesn't have a -V option (but BusyBox expr match can do regular expressions). So I needed a Bash version compare which worked with that constraint.

I've made the following (similar to Dennis Williamson's answer) to compare using a "natural sort" type of algorithm. It splits the string into numeric parts and non-numeric parts; it compares the numeric parts numerically (so 10 is greater than 9), and compares the non-numeric parts as a plain ASCII comparison.

ascii_frag() {
    expr match "$1" "\([^[:digit:]]*\)"
}

ascii_remainder() {
    expr match "$1" "[^[:digit:]]*\(.*\)"
}

numeric_frag() {
    expr match "$1" "\([[:digit:]]*\)"
}

numeric_remainder() {
    expr match "$1" "[[:digit:]]*\(.*\)"
}

vercomp_debug() {
    OUT="$1"
    #echo "${OUT}"
}

# return 1 for $1 > $2
# return 2 for $1 < $2
# return 0 for equal
vercomp() {
    local WORK1="$1"
    local WORK2="$2"
    local NUM1="", NUM2="", ASCII1="", ASCII2=""
    while true; do
        vercomp_debug "ASCII compare"
        ASCII1=`ascii_frag "${WORK1}"`
        ASCII2=`ascii_frag "${WORK2}"`
        WORK1=`ascii_remainder "${WORK1}"`
        WORK2=`ascii_remainder "${WORK2}"`
        vercomp_debug "\"${ASCII1}\" remainder \"${WORK1}\""
        vercomp_debug "\"${ASCII2}\" remainder \"${WORK2}\""

        if [ "${ASCII1}" \> "${ASCII2}" ]; then
            vercomp_debug "ascii ${ASCII1} > ${ASCII2}"
            return 1
        elif [ "${ASCII1}" \< "${ASCII2}" ]; then
            vercomp_debug "ascii ${ASCII1} < ${ASCII2}"
            return 2
        fi
        vercomp_debug "--------"

        vercomp_debug "Numeric compare"
        NUM1=`numeric_frag "${WORK1}"`
        NUM2=`numeric_frag "${WORK2}"`
        WORK1=`numeric_remainder "${WORK1}"`
        WORK2=`numeric_remainder "${WORK2}"`
        vercomp_debug "\"${NUM1}\" remainder \"${WORK1}\""
        vercomp_debug "\"${NUM2}\" remainder \"${WORK2}\""

        if [ -z "${NUM1}" -a -z "${NUM2}" ]; then
            vercomp_debug "blank 1 and blank 2 equal"
            return 0
        elif [ -z "${NUM1}" -a -n "${NUM2}" ]; then
            vercomp_debug "blank 1 less than non-blank 2"
            return 2
        elif [ -n "${NUM1}" -a -z "${NUM2}" ]; then
            vercomp_debug "non-blank 1 greater than blank 2"
            return 1
        fi

        if [ "${NUM1}" -gt "${NUM2}" ]; then
            vercomp_debug "num ${NUM1} > ${NUM2}"
            return 1
        elif [ "${NUM1}" -lt "${NUM2}" ]; then
            vercomp_debug "num ${NUM1} < ${NUM2}"
            return 2
        fi
        vercomp_debug "--------"
    done
}

It can compare more complicated version numbers such as

• 1.2-r3 versus 1.2-r4
• 1.2rc3 versus 1.2r4

Note that it doesn't return the same result for some of the corner-cases in Dennis Williamson's answer. In particular:

1            1.0          <
1.0          1            >
1.0.2.0      1.0.2        >
1..0         1.0          >
1.0          1..0         <

But those are corner cases, and I think the results are still reasonable.