[python] How do I compare version numbers in Python?

I am walking a directory that contains eggs to add those eggs to the sys.path. If there are two versions of the same .egg in the directory, I want to add only the latest one.

I have a regular expression r"^(?P<eggName>\w+)-(?P<eggVersion>[\d\.]+)-.+\.egg$ to extract the name and version from the filename. The problem is comparing the version number, which is a string like 2.3.1.

Since I'm comparing strings, 2 sorts above 10, but that's not correct for versions.

>>> "2.3.1" > "10.1.1"
True

I could do some splitting, parsing, casting to int, etc., and I would eventually get a workaround. But this is Python, not Java. Is there an elegant way to compare version strings?

Posting my full function based on Kindall's solution. I was able to support any alphanumeric characters mixed in with the numbers by padding each version section with leading zeros.

While certainly not as pretty as his one-liner function, it seems to work well with alpha-numeric version numbers. (Just be sure to set the zfill(#) value appropriately if you have long strings in your versioning system.)

def versiontuple(v):
   filled = []
   for point in v.split("."):
      filled.append(point.zfill(8))
   return tuple(filled)

.

>>> versiontuple("10a.4.5.23-alpha") > versiontuple("2a.4.5.23-alpha")
True


>>> "10a.4.5.23-alpha" > "2a.4.5.23-alpha"
False

... and getting back to easy ... for simple scripts you can use:

import sys
needs = (3, 9) # or whatever
pvi = sys.version_info.major, sys.version_info.minor    

later in your code

try:
    assert pvi >= needs
except:
    print("will fail!")
    # etc.

The way that setuptools does it, it uses the pkg_resources.parse_version function. It should be PEP440 compliant.

Example:

#! /usr/bin/python
# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
"""Example comparing two PEP440 formatted versions
"""
import pkg_resources

VERSION_A = pkg_resources.parse_version("1.0.1-beta.1")
VERSION_B = pkg_resources.parse_version("v2.67-rc")
VERSION_C = pkg_resources.parse_version("2.67rc")
VERSION_D = pkg_resources.parse_version("2.67rc1")
VERSION_E = pkg_resources.parse_version("1.0.0")

print(VERSION_A)
print(VERSION_B)
print(VERSION_C)
print(VERSION_D)

print(VERSION_A==VERSION_B) #FALSE
print(VERSION_B==VERSION_C) #TRUE
print(VERSION_C==VERSION_D) #FALSE
print(VERSION_A==VERSION_E) #FALSE

def versiontuple(v):
    return tuple(map(int, (v.split("."))))

>>> versiontuple("2.3.1") > versiontuple("10.1.1")
False

The packaging library contains utilities for working with versions and other packaging-related functionality. This implements PEP 0440 -- Version Identification and is also able to parse versions that don't follow the PEP. It is used by pip, and other common Python tools to provide version parsing and comparison.

$ pip install packaging

from packaging.version import parse as parse_version
version = parse_version('1.0.3.dev')

This was split off from the original code in setuptools and pkg_resources to provide a more lightweight and faster package.

Before the packaging library existed, this functionality was (and can still be) found in pkg_resources, a package provided by setuptools. However, this is no longer preferred as setuptools is no longer guaranteed to be installed (other packaging tools exist), and pkg_resources ironically uses quite a lot of resources when imported. However, all the docs and discussion are still relevant.

From the parse_version() docs:

Parsed a project's version string as defined by PEP 440. The returned value will be an object that represents the version. These objects may be compared to each other and sorted. The sorting algorithm is as defined by PEP 440 with the addition that any version which is not a valid PEP 440 version will be considered less than any valid PEP 440 version and the invalid versions will continue sorting using the original algorithm.

The "original algorithm" referenced was defined in older versions of the docs, before PEP 440 existed.

Semantically, the format is a rough cross between distutils' StrictVersion and LooseVersion classes; if you give it versions that would work with StrictVersion, then they will compare the same way. Otherwise, comparisons are more like a "smarter" form of LooseVersion. It is possible to create pathological version coding schemes that will fool this parser, but they should be very rare in practice.

The documentation provides some examples:

If you want to be certain that your chosen numbering scheme works the way you think it will, you can use the pkg_resources.parse_version() function to compare different version numbers:

>>> from pkg_resources import parse_version
>>> parse_version('1.9.a.dev') == parse_version('1.9a0dev')
True
>>> parse_version('2.1-rc2') < parse_version('2.1')
True
>>> parse_version('0.6a9dev-r41475') < parse_version('0.6a9')
True

I was looking for a solution which wouldn't add any new dependencies. Check out the following (Python 3) solution:

class VersionManager:

    @staticmethod
    def compare_version_tuples(
            major_a, minor_a, bugfix_a,
            major_b, minor_b, bugfix_b,
    ):

        """
        Compare two versions a and b, each consisting of 3 integers
        (compare these as tuples)

        version_a: major_a, minor_a, bugfix_a
        version_b: major_b, minor_b, bugfix_b

        :param major_a: first part of a
        :param minor_a: second part of a
        :param bugfix_a: third part of a

        :param major_b: first part of b
        :param minor_b: second part of b
        :param bugfix_b: third part of b

        :return:    1 if a  > b
                    0 if a == b
                   -1 if a  < b
        """
        tuple_a = major_a, minor_a, bugfix_a
        tuple_b = major_b, minor_b, bugfix_b
        if tuple_a > tuple_b:
            return 1
        if tuple_b > tuple_a:
            return -1
        return 0

    @staticmethod
    def compare_version_integers(
            major_a, minor_a, bugfix_a,
            major_b, minor_b, bugfix_b,
    ):
        """
        Compare two versions a and b, each consisting of 3 integers
        (compare these as integers)

        version_a: major_a, minor_a, bugfix_a
        version_b: major_b, minor_b, bugfix_b

        :param major_a: first part of a
        :param minor_a: second part of a
        :param bugfix_a: third part of a

        :param major_b: first part of b
        :param minor_b: second part of b
        :param bugfix_b: third part of b

        :return:    1 if a  > b
                    0 if a == b
                   -1 if a  < b
        """
        # --
        if major_a > major_b:
            return 1
        if major_b > major_a:
            return -1
        # --
        if minor_a > minor_b:
            return 1
        if minor_b > minor_a:
            return -1
        # --
        if bugfix_a > bugfix_b:
            return 1
        if bugfix_b > bugfix_a:
            return -1
        # --
        return 0

    @staticmethod
    def test_compare_versions():
        functions = [
            (VersionManager.compare_version_tuples, "VersionManager.compare_version_tuples"),
            (VersionManager.compare_version_integers, "VersionManager.compare_version_integers"),
        ]
        data = [
            # expected result, version a, version b
            (1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1),
            (1, 1, 5, 5, 0, 5, 5),
            (1, 1, 0, 5, 0, 0, 5),
            (1, 0, 2, 0, 0, 1, 1),
            (1, 2, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0),
            (0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0),
            (0, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1, -1),  # works even with negative version numbers :)
            (0, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2),
            (-1, 5, 5, 0, 6, 5, 0),
            (-1, 5, 5, 0, 5, 9, 0),
            (-1, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6),
            (-1, 2, 5, 7, 2, 5, 8),
        ]
        count = len(data)
        index = 1
        for expected_result, major_a, minor_a, bugfix_a, major_b, minor_b, bugfix_b in data:
            for function_callback, function_name in functions:
                actual_result = function_callback(
                    major_a=major_a, minor_a=minor_a, bugfix_a=bugfix_a,
                    major_b=major_b, minor_b=minor_b, bugfix_b=bugfix_b,
                )
                outcome = expected_result == actual_result
                message = "{}/{}: {}: {}: a={}.{}.{} b={}.{}.{} expected={} actual={}".format(
                    index, count,
                    "ok" if outcome is True else "fail",
                    function_name,
                    major_a, minor_a, bugfix_a,
                    major_b, minor_b, bugfix_b,
                    expected_result, actual_result
                )
                print(message)
                assert outcome is True
                index += 1
        # test passed!


if __name__ == '__main__':
    VersionManager.test_compare_versions()

EDIT: added variant with tuple comparison. Of course the variant with tuple comparison is nicer, but I was looking for the variant with integer comparison

What's wrong with transforming the version string into a tuple and going from there? Seems elegant enough for me

>>> (2,3,1) < (10,1,1)
True
>>> (2,3,1) < (10,1,1,1)
True
>>> (2,3,1,10) < (10,1,1,1)
True
>>> (10,3,1,10) < (10,1,1,1)
False
>>> (10,3,1,10) < (10,4,1,1)
True

@kindall's solution is a quick example of how good the code would look.

You can use the semver package to determine if a version satisfies a semantic version requirement. This is not the same as comparing two actual versions, but is a type of comparison.

For example, version 3.6.0+1234 should be the same as 3.6.0.

import semver
semver.match('3.6.0+1234', '==3.6.0')
# True

from packaging import version
version.parse('3.6.0+1234') == version.parse('3.6.0')
# False

from distutils.version import LooseVersion
LooseVersion('3.6.0+1234') == LooseVersion('3.6.0')
# False

There is packaging package available, which will allow you to compare versions as per PEP-440, as well as legacy versions.

>>> from packaging.version import Version, LegacyVersion
>>> Version('1.1') < Version('1.2')
True
>>> Version('1.2.dev4+deadbeef') < Version('1.2')
True
>>> Version('1.2.8.5') <= Version('1.2')
False
>>> Version('1.2.8.5') <= Version('1.2.8.6')
True

Legacy version support:

>>> LegacyVersion('1.2.8.5-5-gdeadbeef')
<LegacyVersion('1.2.8.5-5-gdeadbeef')>

Comparing legacy version with PEP-440 version.

>>> LegacyVersion('1.2.8.5-5-gdeadbeef') < Version('1.2.8.6')
True