If you want to do any sort of version number trickery then I'd recommend John Peacock's version module e.g

use version;

my $v1 = version->new("1.4.10");
my $v2 = version->new("1.4.6");

print $v1->stringify," > ",$v2->stringify," = ",
     ($v1 > $v2 ? "true" : "false"), $/;

__output__

1.4.10 > 1.4.6 = true
[download]

HTH

_________
broquaint