PowerShell v6 Alpha 17 has been released and contains an interesting change with the version parameter when applied to powershell.exe. Some discussion around it can be found here and here.

When using a Linux based shell, supplying the version parameter returns the version of the shell:

View the code on Gist.

You can now do a similar thing in PowerShell Core:

View the code on Gist.

Note that using $psversiontable still gives you fuller information:

View the code on Gist.

This is slightly different from the pre-v6 PowerShell version on Windows where the version parameter requires an argument:

For example, you can start PowerShell version 2 from a PowerShell version 5.1 console:

View the code on Gist.

There’s discussion in the Github issues about whether that particular functionality of running different PowerShell versions will be taken forward in PowerShell Core.