There are versions out there that neither understand --version nor -V. Try a
completely different approach: execute a small python script that prints the
version number (and only that) in an easily reusable way using
sys.version_info. This is documented to work since Python 2.0. Use sys.version
for older versions, which is documented to exist since 1.5. If even that
doesn't work then simply assume we are on 1.4.0.