How do I detect the Python version at runtime?

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Chapters
00:00 How Do I Detect The Python Version At Runtime?
00:21 Accepted Answer Score 755
01:02 Answer 2 Score 34
01:15 Answer 3 Score 162
01:25 Answer 4 Score 18
01:56 Thank you

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Full question
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9079...

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Content licensed under CC BY-SA
https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/lice...

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Tags
#python

#avk47

ACCEPTED ANSWER

Score 755

Sure, take a look at sys.version and sys.version_info.

For example, to check that you are running Python 3.x, use

import sys
if sys.version_info[0] < 3:
    raise Exception("Must be using Python 3")

Here, sys.version_info[0] is the major version number. sys.version_info[1] would give you the minor version number.

In Python 2.7 and later, the components of sys.version_info can also be accessed by name, so the major version number is sys.version_info.major.

ANSWER 2

Score 162

Try this code, this should work:

import platform
print(platform.python_version())

ANSWER 3

Score 34

Per sys.hexversion and API and ABI Versioning:

import sys
if sys.hexversion >= 0x3000000:
    print('Python 3.x hexversion %s is in use.' % hex(sys.hexversion))

ANSWER 4

Score 18

The best solution depends on how much code is incompatible. If there are a lot of places you need to support Python 2 and 3, six is the compatibility module. six.PY2 and six.PY3 are two booleans if you want to check the version.

However, a better solution than using a lot of if statements is to use six compatibility functions if possible. Hypothetically, if Python 3000 has a new syntax for next, someone could update six so your old code would still work.

import six

# OK
if six.PY2:
  x = it.next() # Python 2 syntax
else:
  x = next(it) # Python 3 syntax

# Better
x = six.next(it)

http://pythonhosted.org/six/