Another way scaling the major, minor etc version numbers then using List::Util's max to choose the highest version.

use strict;
use warnings;

use feature qw{ say };

use List::Util qw{ max };

open my $pkgsFH, q{<}, \ <<__EOF__ or die qq{open: < HEREDOC: $!\n};
samba-common-libs-4.2.10-6.2.el7_2.x86_64
samba-common-libs-4.2.10-8.el7_2.x86_64
samba-common-libs-4.2.12-7.el7_2.x86_64
samba-common-libs-4.2.10-6.el7_2.x86_64
samba-common-libs-4.2.10-3.el7_2.x86_64
xyz-libs-4.2.10-7.el7_2.x86_64
xyz-libs-4.2.12-7.el7_2.x86_64
xyz-libs-4.2.13-7.el7_2.x86_64
xyz-libs-4.2.11-7.el7_2.x86_64
abc-4.2.11-7.el7_2.x86_64
abc-4.2.11-8.el7_2.x86_64
abc-4.2.11-6.el7_2.x86_64
__EOF__

my %pkgs;
while ( <$pkgsFH> )
{
    chomp;
    my( $pkg, $ver )        = split m{-(?=\d)}, $_, 2;
    $ver                    =~ s{\.el7.*}{};
    my @values              = split m{[-.]}, $ver, 4;
    my $key                 = $values[ 0 ] * 1000000
                            + $values[ 1 ] * 10000
                            + $values[ 2 ] * 100
                            + $values[ 3 ];
    $pkgs{ $pkg }->{ $key } = $_;
}

close $pkgsFH or die qq{close: < HEREDOC: $!\n};

foreach my $pkg ( sort keys %pkgs )
{
    say $pkgs{ $pkg }->{ max keys %{ $pkgs{ $pkg } } }
}

[download]

The output.

abc-4.2.11-8.el7_2.x86_64
samba-common-libs-4.2.12-7.el7_2.x86_64
xyz-libs-4.2.13-7.el7_2.x86_64

[download]

This solution is somewhat simplistic because the packages the OP lists here are nicely behaved in that the version numbers all fall into a similar pattern. The packages look like they come from a RHEL7 server and if the OP is trying to get the highest revision packages from the full output of rpm -qa the solution will fall apart because package versions are whimsical and follow no consistent pattern.

Cheers,

JohnGG

In reply to Re: Advanced Bubble Sort by johngg
in thread Advanced Bubble Sort by Anonymous Monk

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