behavior of "IF(my_version VERSION_EQUAL something)" should be documented and/or fixed

The documentation of the IF statment with VERSION_EQUAL is currently documented as:

if(<variable|string> VERSION_EQUAL <variable|string>)
    Component-wise integer version number comparison (version format is major[.minor[.patch[.tweak]]]).

This does not really clarify how the comparison works if e.g. only the major version is given, as in

if (CMAKE_Fortran_COMPILER_VERSION VERSION_EQUAL 7)

What I actually want to know is whether the major version of my Fortran compiler (here: gfortran) is 7, and I don't care if it's 7.0 7.2 or 7.3 or 7.3.5.

The current behavior seems to be such that the version that I have ("7.3.0") evaluates equal to "7.3" and "7.3.0", but not "7".

My first and minimal request is that this behavior should be documented. Second, I'd like to know how a check for just the major version should be implemented under these circumstances (disregarding any minor versions or patch levels). And finally I wonder if it would make sense to change the behavior of VERSION_EQUAL, in order to make such checks easier (they seem to be the main application to this feature to me).

I assume most people want to check for a specific major (and possibly minor) version number, and are rarely interested in some obscure patch or tweak level. Therefore a simple "VERSION_EQUAL 7" would be more useful if it checked for 7.x, instead of 7.0.0.0. If one really wants to know that the version is 7.0.1.1024, then such a check would still be possible by specifying more than just the major version.