How do i check the version of bash using $BASH_VERSION?

pangolinsos

There the --version good if you just want to see the version.

bash --version
GNU bash, version 4.4.19(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)
Copyright (C) 2016 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>

This is free software; you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

If you are hoping around to different user accounts as root user, one way of determining the shell type of the user is:

$ echo $BASH_VERSION
4.4.19(1)-release

If it comes back blank or undefined, it's not a bash shell.

If you switched shells on the command line from zsh to bash for instance and do echo $SHELL it gives you /usr/bin/zsh, which is your user shell but not the current shell.