Detect python version in shell script

Question

I\'d like to detect if python is installed on a Linux system and if it is, which python version is installed.

How can I do it? Is there something more graceful than

Answer 1

Here is another solution using hash to verify if python is installed and sed to extract the first two major numbers of the version and compare if the minimum version is installed

if ! hash python; then
    echo "python is not installed"
    exit 1
fi

ver=$(python -V 2>&1 | sed 's/.* \([0-9]\).\([0-9]\).*/\1\2/')
if [ "$ver" -lt "27" ]; then
    echo "This script requires python 2.7 or greater"
    exit 1
fi