Leading or trailing hyphen in pre-release or build identifiers

[chrisowensboston]

As written, the spec allows a pre-release or build identifier to begin or end with a hyphen.

As a result, the following pass the spec:

• 2.1.7--43 (version is '2.1.7'; pre-release is '-43' )
• 2.1.7+-43 (version is '2.1.7'; build identifier is '-43')
  Is this intended / desired?

[FichteFoll]

The following text is in both the pre-release and the build metadata sections:

Identifiers MUST comprise only ASCII alphanumerics and hyphen [0-9A-Za-z-]. Identifiers MUST NOT be empty.

So yes, this is valid. They compare lexicographically (over their ASCII value), by the way.

[jwdonahue]

I would not expect to see any humans deciding to use version strings of that form, but I can imagine automation that might produce them, particularly if some config/database field is empty at the time it was generated. The hyphens may actually convey some meaning to somebody.

Since there is no bug or controversy here, please close this issue at your earliest possible convenience.

[chrisowensboston]

Closed as requested by jsdonahue: there is no bug or controversy here.