[Rd] Version names

[Gabor Grothendieck]

I have Windows XP build scripts that look for R in a variety
of folders and if multiple ones are found, takes the last
one.  For example, I currently have the following 
in \Program Files\R :

	rw1060
	rw1062
	rw1071
	rw1071beta
	rw1081
	rw1090
	rw1090dev
	rw1091
	rw1091pat
	rw2000
	rw2001beta

Note that it currently correctly gets rw2001beta but if I
add rw2001 then it will not pick it up since rw2001beta
would continue to sort after it.

I tried using dates in my scripts to pick out the right one
but realized that it was somewhat error prone and decided to
move back to ordering by the names.

I wonder if a naming convention could be adopted that ensured
that the names sort in order.  For example,

	rw2010a - alpha, i.e. development version (previously rw2010dev)
	rw2010b - beta version (previously rw2001beta)
	rw2010f - final version (previously rw2010)
	rw2010p - patched version (previously rw2010pat)

Other possibilities might include an ascending numeric or date suffix.

I also thought about executing 
	bin\R --version 
or 
	bin\Rcmd --version
in each rw folder but am not sure if this works in all versions and
if it does whether the output is always provides a comparable
format.