Comparing Version Strings in C++

If you’re building any kind of version management system in C++, such as a package manager or plugin system, then you’ll need to be able to manipulate, compare and print version strings. The Version structure below extracted from pacm does exactly that:

#include <cstdio>
#include <string>
#include <iostream>

struct Version
{
  int major = 0, minor = 0, revision = 0, build = 0;

	Version(std::string version)
	{
		std::sscanf(version.c_str(), "%d.%d.%d.%d", &major, &minor, &revision, &build);
	}

	bool operator < (const Version& other)
	{
		if (major < other.major)
			return true;
		if (minor < other.minor)
			return true;
		if (revision < other.revision)
			return true;
		if (build < other.build)
			return true;
		return false;
	}

	bool operator == (const Version& other)
	{
		return major == other.major
			&& minor == other.minor
			&& revision == other.revision
			&& build == other.build;
	}

	friend std::ostream& operator << (std::ostream& stream, const Version& ver)
	{
		stream << ver.major;
		stream << '.';
		stream << ver.minor;
		stream << '.';
		stream << ver.revision;
		stream << '.';
		stream << ver.build;
		return stream;
	}
};

Example usage:

void testVersionStringComparison()
{
	assert((Version("3.7.8.0") == Version("3.7.8.0")) == true);
	assert((Version("3.7.8.0") == Version("3.7.8")) == true);
	assert((Version("3.7.8.0") < Version("3.7.8")) == false);
	assert((Version("3.7.9") < Version("3.7.8")) == false);
	assert((Version("3") < Version("3.7.9")) == true);
	assert((Version("1.7.9") < Version("3.1")) == true);

	std::cout << "Printing version (3.7.8.0): " << Version("3.7.8.0") << std::endl;
}