If someone familiar with the internals could answer a question:

When UNIVERSAL::VERSION compares a v-string against a number, it converts the v-string to a float using the 3-digit convension.

So, how does it tell the difference between a scalar that holds a v-string from one that's a floating-point number? It's implemented in XS, not in Perl, so it can do funny things. It complains if a value is "not numeric", which is easy by looking at the type of SV without asking for a conversion. but, the v-string is not numeric, either. How does it tell the difference between a quoted string (an error) and a v-string? Doesn't "Hi" look exactly the same as v72.105 ?

—John