diff --git a/maketgz b/maketgz
index fcfef3f53..200d8b6b0 100755
--- a/maketgz
+++ b/maketgz
@@ -11,7 +11,7 @@ libversion="$version"
 # Now we have a section to get the major, minor and patch number from the
 # full version string. We create a single hexadecimal number from it '0xMMmmpp'
 #
-perl='$a=<STDIN>;@p=split("\\.",$a);for(0..2){printf STDOUT ("%02x",$p[0+$_]);}';
+perl='$a=<STDIN>;@p=split("[\\.-]",$a);for(0..2){printf STDOUT ("%02x",$p[0+$_]);}';
 
 numeric=`echo $libversion | perl -e "$perl"`