On Mon, Dec 22, 2014 at 1:03 PM, Marcus Smith <qwc...@gmail.com> wrote: > > This makes sense if you view "1.7" as encompassing all of the releases >> >> 1.7.0, 1.7.1, 1.7.2, etc. (and their variants). It's a bit like the >> "significant digits" of a number. [1] You want the release to be >> bigger than all releases of that type. > > > but is this really the underlying concept? > Does the PEP explain this as a justification? Where?
I think so. I just read that part of the PEP. In the section "Exclusive ordered comparison," it says, "the comparison operators are < and > and the clause MUST be effectively interpreted as implying the prefix based version exclusion clause != V.* ." The key here is the reference to "prefix based" version exclusion (as opposed to "strict" version matching). If I understand correctly, this says that when "1.7.2" should be compared with "1.7" for equality, it should be compared with "1.7.*" as opposed to "1.7.0". This is described in the "Version matching" section. The prefix-based ".*" notation encapsulates what I said above about how "1.7" can be viewed as encompassing all of the releases 1.7.0, 1.7.1, etc. --Chris _______________________________________________ Distutils-SIG maillist - Distutils-SIG@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/distutils-sig