While I personally like the v-string standard for human-readability, the facts already presented in this thread strongly suggest the dotted-decimal system would find the most widespread use -- and reducing your pre-v5.10 non-core dependencies can only be of benefit.

For personal version control I version everything with a timestamp similar to, but not quite exactly like, ISO 8601, and since almost everything on my system has this, and I have a bunch of tools written which make manipulation of these files very, very easy, I'm disinclined to change my personal standard -- but I also don't expose it to other people unless they are watching me type :-).

Example: P-2013-10-18@1131-Alternate-Universe-Project.docx

I suppose I could bring myself some free weekend to convert all my tools to ISO 8601 and it wouldn't take long to adapt.

I'll have to think on that.

But I think the evidence is overwhelming that the answer to your question is likely to be dotted-decimal.

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