Concatenating 'v' to the front of each version string and evaling using eq, gt,lt or cmp seems to work okay. I'm sure I saw 'vMMM.nnn.rr' described somewhere in the docs, but I couldn't find it anywhere just now?

#! perl -slw
use strict;

sub map2 (&@) {
    use Carp;
    my $code = shift;
    croak 'Odd number of values in list' if @_ & 1;
    map { local ($a, $b) = (shift,shift); $code->() } 1 .. (@_>>1);
}

sub cmpVer{ eval{'v'.$_[0] cmp 'v'.$_[1];} } # << This is the salient 
+bit

my @a = qw[
    1.1.1    1.1.1
    1.1.1    1.1.2
    1.1.2    1.1.1
    1.1.10    1.2.0
    0.111.0    9.0.0
    9.0.0    0.111.0
    1.4.999    1.5.0
];

map2{
    printf "%10s %2.2s %s\n", $a, (qw/== > </)[cmpVer($a, $b)], $b;
} @a;
__END__
C:\test>228707
     1.1.1 == 1.1.1
     1.1.1  < 1.1.2
     1.1.2  > 1.1.1
    1.1.10  < 1.2.0
   0.111.0  < 9.0.0
     9.0.0  > 0.111.0
   1.4.999  < 1.5.0

C:\test>
[download]

If anyone can tell me why I can't supply a qw// list directly to my map2 sub

map2{ print $a, $b; } qw[a b c d];
[download]

without getting syntax errors, I'd like to hear the explanation.