LPM: MakeMaker and version numbers

[Rich Bowen]

Rich Bowen wrote:
> 
> On Monday, someone asked what the limitations were on the version
> numbers used when setting $VERSION in a module. I was tinkering with
> that this morning, and observed the following. When I set $VERSION to
> 
> $VERSION = 0.001.001.03;
> 
> the file that was generated by 'make dist' was
> 
> testing-0.00113.tar.gz

And, my second observation is that if $VERSION is a string, rather than
a bareword, that this works. 

I hate it when I send out dumb things in email. Obviously, the line of
code above:

$VERSION = 0.001.001.03;

is not particularly valid, since 0.001.001.03 is not a number or a valid
expression of any kind. Perl converts it to a number in the best way
that it can figure out. So 0.001.001.03 becomes 0.00113

$VERSION = '0.001.001.03';

would have been just fine. As would

$VERSION = 'this_is_my_way_cool_version_number';

Rich 'RTFM' Bowen
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