You have to split the version numbers into pieces and compare each part. Here's a very wordy solution:

my $old_version = '1.4.10';
my $new_version = '1.6.0';

my @old_version = split /\./, $old_version;
my @new_version = split /\./, $new_version;
my $cmp = 0;

$cmp ||= ($old_version[$_] <=> $new_version[$_]) for (0 .. $#old_versi
+on);

if ($cmp == 0) {
    print "$old_version == $new_version\n";
} elsif ($cmp == 1) {
    print "$old_version > $new_version\n";
} else {
    print "$old_version < $new_version\n";
}
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blokhead