How to check if feature (JSON) exists, and/or version This is a cross-posting from an original question at How to check version is greater than some base value?

When calling MySQL SELECT @@VERSION; or SELECT VERSION();, I get for instance '5.7.11-log'. Is there a "well-known" way to check if the version is greater (or smaller) than some major.minor.patch version? If not a well-known way, is there a way without using a temporary table or a user-defined function (there probably is, but for a reason or another currently eludes me)? I would use this to check if there's support for JSON type type that was introduced in version 5.7.8.

Upon researching this more, it appears this is a bit tougher nut for my skills to crack. For instance, I could write something like

SELECT
    SUBSTRING_INDEX(@@VERSION, '.', 1) AS major, 
    SUBSTRING_INDEX(SUBSTRING_INDEX(@@VERSION,'.', 2), '.', -1) AS minor, 
    SUBSTRING_INDEX(SUBSTRING_INDEX(@@VERSION,'.', -2), '.', -1) AS patch;


but that isn't entirely satisfactory (e.g. see -log) and it doesn't directly check the existence of the feature.

Is anyone aware of better ways?

&lt;edit: To amend Rick's answer a bit, the comments syntax can be used to recognize constructs too, not just versions. For instance, in this particular case like this SELECT /*!JSON_TYPE*/('["a", "b", 1]');. Here's a link to the documentation: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/comments.html.
/*!50700 ... */ says:  If you are running a version older than 5.7.0, this is a comment.  Else it is sql.  It can be entire statements or fragments of statements.

Example (taken from mysqldump output):

/*!40103 SET @OLD_TIME_ZONE=@@TIME_ZONE */;


Presumably, @@TIME_ZONE was implemented in 4.1.3.

(Note:  I think the two spaces are part of the syntax.)