How do I get the version of an application from the command line?

I would like to know how to get the version information of an installed program that doesn't have the

--version or -version

method implemented.

You can use dpkg or apt-cache.

To check the version of bash, for example:

dpkg -l bash

apt-cache show bash

If the program doesn't have any command line option that displays version information you can try to use dpkg to get the package version which usually contains the program version ion some way.

dpkg -S "$(which YOUR_PROGRAM)"

prints the package that contains YOUR_PROGRAM, and

dpkg --status YOUR_PACKAGE | grep ^Version

prints the version of YOUR_PACKAGE.

You can put it all together:

dpkg --status "$(dpkg -S "$(which YOUR_PROGRAM)" | cut -d: -f1)" | grep ^Version

Use it for example like this for ls:

dpkg --status "$(dpkg -S "$(which ls)"| cut -d: -f1)"| grep ^Version

The below command also gives you the exact installed package version.

apt-cache policy <package-name> | grep Installed: | cut -d: -f2

Example

$ apt-cache policy firefox | grep Installed: | cut -d: -f2
24.0+build1-0ubuntu1

$ apt-cache policy gedit | grep Installed: | cut -d: -f2
3.8.3-0ubuntu3