Comment by multjoy

7 months ago

How can "which is the larger number" be an ambiguous question?

Which is the bigger version number? Version 9.9 or version 9.11? Which is the bigger dollar amount? $9.9 or $9.11?

Periods are not always used for the decimal separator but also as a separator for multiple sets of semi-independent numbers.

  • if someone says "which is the bigger number" with no context you wont assume software version number, lets be real here

    also $9.9 is clearly 9 dollars and 90 cents.

As everyone else has said, semver. I use semver so often that my initial reading of 9.9 < 9.11 in a Hacker News comment would evaluate to true.

There are some contexts where 9.11 is larger than 9.9, such as semver, so it could be ambiguous depending on the context.