semver regular expression does not follow Semantic Versioning standard format

[petermichaux]

var semver = "\\s*[v=]*\\s*([0-9]+)"        // major
           + "\\.([0-9]+)"                  // minor
           + "\\.([0-9]+)"                  // patch
           + "(-[0-9]+-?)?"                 // build
           + "([a-zA-Z-+][a-zA-Z0-9-\.:]*)?" // tag

The above is the foundation of parsing in this module but it does not follow the format from the Semantic Version standard http://semver.org/

/^([0-9]+)\.([0-9]+)\.([0-9]+)(?:-([0-9A-Za-z-]+(?:\.[0-9A-Za-z-]+)*))?(?:\+[0-9A-Za-z-]+)?$/

The first capturing group is "major".

The second capturing group is "minor".

The third capturing group is "patch".

The forth capturing group is "prerelease" (not including the preceding dash delimiter between patch and prerelease).

The "build" is non-capturing because it is not to be used in any comparisons.

[petermichaux]

@isaacs I've proposed the inclusion of a BNF grammar in the Semantic Version standard. See semver/semver#110

[isaacs]

Please test out v2.0. Either pull the master branch, or npm install semver@alpha.

There's still a few allowances for 1.2.3beta type prerelease tags without the -, because that's widely in use in npm. We'll have to start warning about it or something and then phase it out eventually if that's actually a problem.

[petermichaux]

I think it is ok if 1.2.3beta is allowed if it is treated like 1.2.3-beta. Most importantly and more generally, as long as all versions that comply to the Semantic Version standard are treated properly then it is ok if node-semver has extensions to allow versions with other syntax.

[isaacs]

In the latest code on master, every function will have an optional loose flag. In loose mode, it'll allow prerelease versions that don't start with -, and zero-leading numeric ids.

Moving forward, npm will use loose mode when evaluating others' package.json files, but strict mode when evaluating yours for publishing/etc. Maybe some day, we can remove loose mode.

[bfloydgsn]

Slightly better regex for 2.0.0-rc.2
([0-9]+)\.([0-9]+)\.([0-9]+)(?:(\-[0-9A-Za-z-]+(?:\.[0-9A-Za-z-]+)*))?(?:\+[0-9A-Za-z-\-\.]+)?

[isaacs]

@bfloydgsn You're commenting on a 3-year-old issue. This is historical, and not a good place to put new things.

If you'd like to make an improvement or have found a bug, please open a new PR or issue. Thanks.