Pipeline doesn't seem to have any effect in Bash

Question

Anyone can explain me why this

python -V | awk '{print $2}'

returns this

Python 2.7.5                             

instead of

2.7.5

What to do to return only the version number without "Python " ?

Answer 1

If you run

python -V >/dev/null

you will notice that you still get output! Apparently, python -V prints its output to stderr, not to stdout.

In a bourne-like shell, this should work:

python -V 2>&1 | awk '{print $2}'