Forum: CFEngine Help Subject: Re: rpm_version package provider Author: mikesphar Link to topic: https://cfengine.com/forum/read.php?3,27409,27435#msg-27435
neilhwatson Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > And that's when you kicked him? His point was valid though, that the actual data structures this version information is virtually always stored in, is not as INTs or floats but as strings, so projecting numeric assumptions onto a string datatype just because the contents usually look like numbers is a programming error lurking in the grass. It's like how people sometimes used to use INTs for the database fields for zip codes in the US. Then one day they needed to enter an address outside the US and discovered an unexpected complication. Basically the advice was "unless you are going to perform mathematical operations on it, consider it a string. And sorting--even numerical sorting--is not a mathematical operation." It's actually served me relatively well when I remember it, and saved me a couple times when I might have been bitten by an assumption about things like employee IDs or part "numbers" or such. But none of that changes how frustrating and inconsistent version labeling can be, of course. _______________________________________________ Help-cfengine mailing list Help-cfengine@cfengine.org https://cfengine.org/mailman/listinfo/help-cfengine
