Semver Checker

Caret (^) and tilde (~) ranges, comparison operators (>=, >, <=, <, =), and x/* wildcard versions like "1.2.x" or "1.x". Compound ranges that combine multiple clauses with " - " or "||" are not supported.

Tilde (~1.2.3) allows patch-level updates only (>=1.2.3 <1.3.0). Caret (^1.2.3) allows any update that doesn't change the left-most non-zero digit — so ^1.2.3 allows up to <2.0.0, but ^0.2.3 (a pre-1.0 package) only allows up to <0.3.0, matching npm's special handling of 0.x versions.

Per the semver spec, a version with a prerelease tag (like 1.0.0-beta.1) is always considered lower than the same version without one (1.0.0). Between two prereleases, identifiers are compared piece by piece, with numeric identifiers compared numerically and alphanumeric identifiers compared as strings.

No — per the semver spec, build metadata is ignored entirely when determining version precedence. It's parsed and shown for reference but has no effect on the comparison or range-satisfaction result.

It's a good sanity check for whether a specific version falls inside a package.json range, but it doesn't replace reading the changelog — semver compliance is a convention, not a guarantee, and breaking changes occasionally slip into minor/patch releases.