How do you find what version of libstdc++ library is installed on your linux machine?

Question

I found the following command: strings /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 | grep GLIBC from here. It seems to work but this is an ad-hoc/heuristic method.

Is there a specific command that can be used to query the library version of C++? Or is the method I found the accepted method?

Answer 1

To find which library is being used you could run

 $ /sbin/ldconfig -p | grep stdc++
    libstdc++.so.6 (libc6) => /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6

The list of compatible versions for libstdc++ version 3.4.0 and above is provided by

 $ strings /usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6 | grep LIBCXX
 GLIBCXX_3.4
 GLIBCXX_3.4.1
 GLIBCXX_3.4.2
 ...

For earlier versions the symbol GLIBCPP is defined.

The date stamp of the library is defined in a macro __GLIBCXX__ or __GLIBCPP__ depending on the version:

// libdatestamp.cxx
#include <cstdio>

int main(int argc, char* argv[]){
#ifdef __GLIBCPP__
    std::printf("GLIBCPP: %d\n",__GLIBCPP__);
#endif
#ifdef __GLIBCXX__
    std::printf("GLIBCXX: %d\n",__GLIBCXX__);
#endif
   return 0;
}

$ g++ libdatestamp.cxx -o libdatestamp
$ ./libdatestamp
GLIBCXX: 20101208

The table of datestamps of libstdc++ versions is listed in the documentation: