Tips for finding the version number of a software

[Chattercube]

It is easy to know the version of a program, but it is often very tricky to find the full, exact version number of an applications. It don't appear in Readme s and sometime the about page won't show you the complete one, is there any other ways or tips to find it?

[mrpijey]

That depends entirely on the application developer. Sometimes it's saved in the main executable, sometimes in a separate file. Sometimes it's encoded in a different file. And sometimes you just need to start it to figure it out. There's no universal standard of how to encode software versioning.

[Overdoze]

Considering I had to deal with this a lot myself when checking various Microsoft programs, I can give you some advice in that area at least.

Pre-Windows 3.1 (or pre-3.0, not sure) programs don't have any version fields in file properties, so you have to rely on some other source of information (e.g. internal strings, readme).

For 3.1 and later you can check the file and product version fields in file properties. Also useful are setup information files (.inf, typically named setup.inf or <main exe name>.inf), which usually contains information matching the file version. If you have original installation files, of course.

And sometimes there simply is no designated version.

[TheDosProgrammer]

Some newer programs have so called "splash screens" with version number written somewhere; then there is also Help > About and ResEdit (check the Version Info resources). If you have the original installation media (CDs, floppies etc.), check the labels.

PS: Use Borland Resource Workshop 4.5 instead of ResEdit for 16-bit executables.