How to find the version of software installed in ubuntu

Question

Is there a universal command that I can use in the console, for example, how to find the mysql version?

Answer 1

You can use dpkg to get this information:

 dpkg -l mysql-server | grep -E "^ii" | tr -s ' ' | cut -d' ' -f3 

This will give you the installed version of the mysql-server package.

If the package is not installed, it will print "No packages found according to the mysql server." instead of this.

Answer 2

Almost all programs that can be run on the command line have the --version option.

For instance:

 git --version ls --version 

The format of their output is nowhere near the standard. Some simplify the analysis, some (often) contain little license information.