Can anyone Pythonize this lexical algorithm?

[Terry Reedy]

ShashiGowda wrote:
> I am writing a package manager and stuck unable to write the version
> sorting function the algorithm is here http://www.linux.gr/cgi-bin/man/man2html?deb-version+5
> and all other info is also in it please tell me how to do lexical
> comparision in python it'll be cool if you just write the code!

Assuming you want 10.1 to sort after 9.8 and 1.10 after 1.9, you want to 
compare tuples or lists of ints.