There are several ways to handle the version depending on what you want to do with it. I like to break it up into its components like so:

my ($major, $minor, $patch) = unpack 'CCC', $^V;
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If you just want to print it, have a look at the docs for sprintf() and printf(). They support things like:

my $version_string = sprintf "%vd", $^V;
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If you want to compare it you can do so directly using Perl's new "vector of ordinal" type strings:

warn "Unsupported version\n" unless $^V ge v5.6.0;
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-sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";

The Camel (3ed.) suggests this may give what you want:

After Compline,
Zaxo

$^V isn't going to work for versions prior to 5.6.0, so $] may be the better option if you can't guarantee how old a version of Perl you'll be running.

$ perl5.00503 -le 'print $]'
5.00503
$ perl5.6.0 -le 'print $]'
5.006
$ perl5.6.1 -le 'print $]'
5.006001
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Or, if you want to "pretty print" it...

$ perl5.00503 -le 'printf "v%d.%d.%d\n", $] =~ /^(\d+)\.(\d{3})(\d*)/'
v5.5.3
$ perl5.6.0 -le 'printf "v%d.%d.%d\n", $] =~ /^(\d+)\.(\d{3})(\d*)/'
v5.6.0
$ perl5.6.1 -le 'printf "v%d.%d.%d\n", $] =~ /^(\d+)\.(\d{3})(\d*)/'
v5.6.1
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    --k.

s/./ord($&)/eg;
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