Programming Perl, 4th Edition

version

use version 0.77;

my $version = version–>parse($version_string);
my $qversion = qv($other_version_string);

if ($version > $qversion) {
    say "Version is greater!";
}

The version module isn’t really a pragma, but it looks like one since its name is all lowercase. Before v5.10, version provided a way to quote version with qv() and compare version numbers. It sounds simple, but when you get down to the hairy task it actually is, you might doubt your commitment to programming. For instance, how do you order the versions 1.02, 1.2, and v1.2.0? Now Perl can do that internally. It’s still a mess, though.^[262]

^[262] You might like David Golden’s “Version numbers should be boring”.