How to Check the Python Version in the Scripts

1. sys.version Method to Check Python Version
2. sys.version_info Method to Check Python Version
3. platform.python_version() Method to Check Python Version
4. six Module Method to Check Python Version

In different circumstances, we need to know the Python version, or more precisely, the Python interpreter version that is executing the Python script file.

sys.version Method to Check Python Version

This version information could be retrieved from sys.version in the sys module.

In Python 2.x

>>> import sys
>>> sys.version
'2.7.10 (default, May 23 2015, 09:44:00) [MSC v.1500 64 bit (AMD64)]'

or in Python 3.x

>>> import sys
>>> sys.version
'3.7.0 (v3.7.0:1bf9cc5093, Jun 27 2018, 04:59:51) [MSC v.1914 64 bit (AMD64)]'

sys.version_info Method to Check Python Version

sys.version returns a string containing the human-readable version information of the current Python interpreter. But the information like major release number and micro release number needs extra processing to be derived for further usage in the codes.

sys.version_info solves this problem easily by returning the version information as a named tuple. The version data it returns is,

>>> import sys
>>> sys.version_info
sys.version_info(major=2, minor=7, micro=10, releaselevel='final', serial=0)

You could compare the current version with the reference version simply using >, >=, ==, <= or < operators.

>>> import sys
>>> sys.version_info >= (2, 7)
True
>>> sys.version_info >= (2, 7, 11)
False

We could add an assert in the scripts to make sure that the script runs with the requirement of minimal Python version.

import sys

assert sys.version_info >= (3, 7)

It will raise an AssertionError if the interpreter doesn’t meet the version requirement.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\test\test.py", line 4, in <module>
    assert sys.version_info >= (3, 7)
AssertionError

platform.python_version() Method to Check Python Version

python_version() in platform module returns the Python version as string major.minor.patchlevel.

>>> from platform import python_version
>>> python_version()
'3.7.0'

Or similar to sys.version_info, platform also has a method to return the Python version as tuple (major, minor, patchlevel) of strings - python_version_tuple()

>>> import platform
>>> platform.python_version_tuple()
('3', '7', '0')

six Module Method to Check Python Version

If you only need to check whether the Python version is Python 2.x or Python 3.x, you could use six module to do the job.

from __future__ import print_function

import six

if six.PY2:
    print("Python 2.x")
if six.PY3:
    print ("Python 3.x")