John Peacock wrote:
Based on a discussion started on p5p, I have revised the version object code to
always return the initializer string as the stringified version (much like I was
already doing for Module::Build::Version). Thus what you put in is what you get
out; the sole exception is that the use of qv(1.2) *NOTE* one decimal place and
no leading 'v' *NOTE* will stringify as "v1.2" so we can successfully roundtrip
that value.
I've followed the discussion on p5p loosely as I'm mostly ignorant about
version objects (as most users should be, I think).
I don't believe the current version objects support mathematical
operations, but it seems something very reasonable to add. (At least,
the addition of increment($step)/decrement($step) type ops.)
I wonder how this would affect the consistency of this scheme. If you
create a version object. Store the string representation as supplied to
the constructor. You will get back that representation exactly. If you
the perform an operation on the object and stringify it, you will then
get back a possibly different representation. Correct?
$v = version->new('1.01');
print $v . "\n";
$nv = $v + version->new('0.01'); # or maybe $nv = $v->inc('0.01');
print $nv . "\n";
would output:
1.01
1.020
Correct?
versions are numbers. stringification is a lossy operation, just like
with numbers. numerical equality does not guarantee string equality. Why
not just simplify output by dropping trailing zeros? or making the
return representation a configurable or sprintf()-like option?
I'm not trying to add to the argument. More than anything, I'm probably
just expressing my ignorance.
Randy.
