rjt wrote:

> Fred Bartholomai wrote:
>> Dear Fellow Linux users,
>>
>> I come from years of HP-UX unix background. We are in the midst
>> of porting our system to Red Hat Linux.
>>
>> We commonly use the "what" command in order to help
>> us with the version number for a particular applications
>> we are developing.
>>
>> I noticed on Red Hat Linux 8.0 that such a command doesn't
>> exist. Looked for it on the gnu site as well, but no luck.
>
> This is an old post, but what the hell...
>
> rpm -qf /path/to/some/application
>
> (This only works for files installed by rpm, which will include
> the entire base OS.)


I just use the -q switch and the short name of the application.
e.g. in my system:
rpm -q opera
returns
opera-7.11-20030515.1