>>> from packaging import version
>>> version.parse("2.3.1") < version.parse("10.1.2")
True
>>> version.parse("1.3.a4") < version.parse("10.1.2")
True
>>> isinstance(version.parse("1.3.a4"), version.Version)
True
>>> isinstance(version.parse("1.3.xy123"), version.LegacyVersion)
True
>>> version.Version("1.3.xy123")
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
packaging.version.InvalidVersion: Invalid version: '1.3.xy123'
packaging.version.parse is a third-party utility but is used by setuptools (so you probably already have it installed) and is conformant to the current PEP 440; it will return a packaging.version.Version if the version is compliant and a packaging.version.LegacyVersion if not. The latter will always sort before valid versions.
Note: packaging has recently been vendored into setuptools.
An ancient alternative still used by a lot of software is distutils.version, built in but undocumented and conformant only to the superseded PEP 386;
>>> from distutils.version import LooseVersion, StrictVersion
>>> LooseVersion("2.3.1") < LooseVersion("10.1.2")
True
>>> StrictVersion("2.3.1") < StrictVersion("10.1.2")
True
>>> StrictVersion("1.3.a4")
Traceback (most recent call last):
...
ValueError: invalid version number '1.3.a4'
As you can see it sees valid PEP 440 versions as “not strict” and therefore doesn’t match modern Python’s notion of what a valid version is.
As distutils.version is undocumented, here's the relevant docstrings.