=head3 Version Strings
+B<Note:> Version Strings (v-strings) have been deprecated. They will
+be removed in some future release after Perl 5.8.1. The marginal
+benefits of v-strings were greatly outweighed by the potential for
+Surprise and Confusion.
+
A literal of the form C<v1.20.300.4000> is parsed as a string composed
of characters with the specified ordinals. This form, known as
v-strings, provides an alternative, more readable way to construct
you also use the inet_aton()/inet_ntoa() routines of the Socket package.
Note that since Perl 5.8.1 the single-number v-strings (like C<v65>)
-are not v-strings before the C<< => >> operator. (They were v-strings
-from Perl 5.6.0 to Perl 5.8.0, but that caused more confusion and
-breakage than good.)
+are not v-strings before the C<< => >> operator (which is usually used
+to separate a hash key from a hash value), instead they are interpreted
+as literal strings ('v65'). They were v-strings from Perl 5.6.0 to
+Perl 5.8.0, but that caused more confusion and breakage than good.
+Multi-number v-strings like C<v65.66> and C<65.66.67> continue to
+be v-strings always.
=head3 Special Literals