I cast my incantation in C, diving headlong into the danger:

void version(char *progname, char *rcs_rev)
{
  int major = -1;
  int minor = -1;
  char *where = NULL;
  char buf[5];
  char nulls[5] = {'\000', '\000', '\000', '\000', '\000'};
  int bufptr = 0;

  if(strchr(rcs_rev, ':') == NULL) {
    printf("%s, no RCS revision given.\n", progname);
    return;
  }

  where = strchr(rcs_rev, ' ');
  where++;

  while(where[0] != ' ') {
    if(where[0] != ' ' && where[0] != '.') {
      buf[bufptr++] = where[0];
    }
    else if(where[0] == '.') {
      if(major == -1) {
        major = atoi(buf);
      } else if(minor == -1) {
        minor = atoi(buf);
        break;
      }
      bufptr = 0;
      memcpy(buf,nulls,5);
    } else
      break;

    where++;
  }

  fprintf(stderr,"%s version %d.%d\n",progname,major,minor);
}
[download]

Then I realized I had spent an hour writing a simple getopt thing for my small tool (clone of 'from'), and most of time had been sunk on that part that merely prints the version number from RCS.

Then, in 2 minutes, I wrote the same in Perl:

sub version {
  my ($progname, $rcs_rev) = (@_);

  if($rcs_rev !~ /:/) {
    print "$progname, no RCS version given.\n";
    return;
  }

  $rcs_rev =~ /Revision: (\d+)\.(\d+)/;
  my ($major, $minor) = ($1, $2);

  print "$progname version $major.$minor\n";
}
[download]

I hope people will learn to understand why I think Perl is such a nice language.

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