Knowing Python Version from Terminal

In Linux it is hard to see the version of any software and module. So from terminal typing:

python -V shows the version of Python that the python command resolves to.

This one is one easy way to figure out python version you are currrently using, but there are other uniwue methods to know which Python version you are using through terminal. Type python in terminal & by default you will see this below:

Python 2.7.6 (default, Mar 22 2014, 22:59:56) 
[GCC 4.8.2] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> 

Here Python  2.7.6 is the version of your python.
In case  you tpye python 3.4 you will see:

Python 3.4.1 (default, Jul 31 2014, 12:46:17) 
[GCC 4.8.2] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

In Ubuntu we can check the resolution with readlink -f $(which python). In default cases in 14.04 this will simply point to /usr/bin/python2.7.
We can chain this in to show the version of that version of Python:

$ readlink -f $(which python) | xargs -I % sh -c 'echo -n "%: "; % -V'
/usr/bin/python2.7: Python 2.7.6

But this is still only telling us what our current python resolution is. If we were in a Virtualenv (a common Python stack management system) python might resolve to a different version:

$ readlink -f $(which python) | xargs -I % sh -c 'echo -n "%: "; % -V'
/home/oli/venv/bin/python: Python 2.7.4