A wrapper around ping which uses ping6 if the target has an AAAA record

pingwrapper.py

#!/usr/bin/python3

import ipaddr
import os
import socket
import sys

if len(sys.argv) == 1:
    print("""Usage: %s <hostname|ip>""" % sys.argv[0])
    sys.exit(1)
else:
    host = sys.argv[1]

try:
    ip = socket.getaddrinfo(host, None)[0][4][0]
    version = ipaddr.IPAddress(ip).version
    if version == 4:
        os.execl("/bin/ping", "/bin/ping", host)
    elif version == 6:
        os.execl("/bin/ping6", "/bin/ping6", host)
except:
    print("unknown host")
    sys.exit(2)

Requires ipaddr.
Under ubuntu, install python3-ipaddr