Comment by multjoy

13 hours 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.