What's about: >>> import sys >>> print sys.version_info (2, 1, 3, 'final', 0)
Python 1.5.2 (#1, Mar 3 2001, 01:35:43) [GCC 2.96 20000731 (Red Hat Linux 7.1 2 on linux-i386
Copyright 1991-1995 Stichting Mathematisch Centrum, Amsterdam
>>> import sys
>>> sys.version_info
Traceback (innermost last):
File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
AttributeError: version_info
...which the OP may have known, since they suggested sys.version, which *is* availible in pre-2.0.
My own messy solution involves a shell script installer which runs a 1.5-safe Python script which installs a needs-2.2 Python script. But I needed an installer for other reasons. This would be ugly for a single script.
djo -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
