diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index 4f796ef..8cdfdf0 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-VERSION := $(shell perl -ne 's/^\# Version: // and print' commit-patch)
+VERSION := $(shell perl -ne '/VERSION\s*=\s*'"'(.*)'"'/ and print "$$1"' commit-patch)
 
 all: executable commit-partial commit-patch.1 commit-partial.1 commit-patch.html
 
diff --git a/commit-patch b/commit-patch
index f03cb50..11e5d40 100755
--- a/commit-patch
+++ b/commit-patch
@@ -2,7 +2,8 @@
 # Copyright (c) 2003-2009 David Caldwell <david@porkrind.org>
 #                     and Jim Radford <radford@bleackbean.org>, All Rights Reserved.
 # This code can be distributed under the terms of the GNU Public License
-# Version: 2.2
+
+my $VERSION = '2.2';
 
 use strict;
 use Cwd qw(abs_path);