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Versions(3) User Contributed Perl Documentation Versions(3)
NAME
Sort::Versions - a perl 5 module for sorting of revision-like numbers
SYNOPSIS
use Sort::Versions;
@l = sort { versioncmp($a, $b) } qw( 1.2 1.2.0 1.2a.0 1.2.a 1.a 02.a );
...
use Sort::Versions;
print 'lower' if versioncmp('1.2', '1.2a') == -1;
...
use Sort::Versions;
%h = (1 => 'd', 2 => 'c', 3 => 'b', 4 => 'a');
@h = sort { versioncmp($h{$a}, $h{$b}) } keys %h;
DESCRIPTION
Sort::Versions allows easy sorting of mixed non-numeric and numeric strings, like the
'version numbers' that many shared library systems and revision control packages use. This
is quite useful if you are trying to deal with shared libraries. It can also be applied to
applications that intersperse variable-width numeric fields within text. Other
applications can undoubtedly be found.
For an explanation of the algorithm, it's simplest to look at these examples:
1.1 < 1.2
1.1a < 1.2
1.1 < 1.1.1
1.1 < 1.1a
1.1.a < 1.1a
1 < a
a < b
1 < 2
1.1-3 < 1.1-4
1.1-5 < 1.1.6
More precisely (but less comprehensibly), the two strings are treated as subunits
delimited by periods or hyphens. Each subunit can contain any number of groups of digits
or non-digits. If digit groups are being compared on both sides, a numeric comparison is
used, otherwise a ASCII ordering is used. A group or subgroup with more units will win if
all comparisons are equal. A period binds digit groups together more tightly than a
hyphen.
Some packages use a different style of version numbering: a simple real number written as
a decimal. Sort::Versions has limited support for this style: when comparing two subunits
which are both digit groups, if either subunit has a leading zero, then both are treated
like digits after a decimal point. So for example:
0002 < 1
1.06 < 1.5
This won't always work, because there won't always be a leading zero in real-number style
version numbers. There is no way for Sort::Versions to know which style was intended. But
a lot of the time it will do the right thing. If you are making up version numbers, the
style with (possibly) more than one dot is the style to use.
USAGE
The function "versioncmp()" takes two arguments and compares them like "cmp". With perl
5.6 or later, you can also use this function directly in sorting:
@l = sort versioncmp qw(1.1 1.2 1.0.3);
The function "versions()" can be used directly as a sort function even on perl 5.005 and
earlier, but its use is deprecated.
AUTHOR
Ed Avis <ed AT membled.com> and Matt Johnson <mwj99 AT doc.uk> for recent releases; the
original author is Kenneth J. Albanowski <kjahds AT kjahds.com>. Thanks to Hack Kampbjorn
and Slaven Rezic for patches and bug reports.
Copyright (c) 1996, Kenneth J. Albanowski. All rights reserved. This program is free
software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.
POD ERRORS
Hey! The above document had some coding errors, which are explained below:
Around line 141:
Non-ASCII character seen before =encoding in 'Kampbjorn'. Assuming UTF-8
perl v5.16.3 2003-08-24 Versions(3)
Generated by $Id: phpMan.php,v 4.55 2007/09/05 04:42:51 chedong Exp $ Author: Che Dong
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