Comment 18 for bug 633742

The sequence you have given is insufficient to determine
what the collation sequence SHOULD be even if tilde-in-version
is included.

rpmvercmp does segmented (i.e. alphas/digits/other are split into classes) comparisons

The comparison issues start to creep-in with (arbitrarily defined) mixed-mode comparisons.
I.e. How should digits be compared to alphas or punctuation when found in
a comparison sequence?

Your sequence is too predictable to capture the problematic mixed-mode
comparison issues. There are historical issues that prevent ASCII
or LC_COLLATE being simply re-used.

The intent of tilde-in-version is very well known: how to implement
mixed-mode comparison in rpm is what isn't obvious.