diff --git a/debian/orig-tar.sh b/debian/orig-tar.sh
index 9d090c18..852af931 100755
--- a/debian/orig-tar.sh
+++ b/debian/orig-tar.sh
@@ -140,9 +140,9 @@ if test -z  "$TAG" -a -z "$FINAL_RELEASE"; then
         # In general, in Debian, we will keep X until X.0.1 is released (or rc in experimental)
         # However, on apt.llvm.org, we will update the version to have X.0.1
         # This code is doing that.
-        MAJOR=$(grep "set(LLVM_VERSION_MAJOR" llvm/CMakeLists.txt|sed -e "s|.*LLVM_VERSION_MAJOR \(.*\))|\1|")
-        MINOR=$(grep "set(LLVM_VERSION_MINOR" llvm/CMakeLists.txt|sed -e "s|.*LLVM_VERSION_MINOR \(.*\))|\1|")
-        PATCH=$(grep "set(LLVM_VERSION_PATCH" llvm/CMakeLists.txt|sed -e "s|.*LLVM_VERSION_PATCH \(.*\))|\1|")
+        MAJOR=$(grep "set(LLVM_VERSION_MAJOR" llvm/CMakeLists.txt|tr -d -c '[0-9]')
+        MINOR=$(grep "set(LLVM_VERSION_MINOR" llvm/CMakeLists.txt|tr -d -c '[0-9]')
+        PATCH=$(grep "set(LLVM_VERSION_PATCH" llvm/CMakeLists.txt|tr -d -c '[0-9]')
         CURRENT_VERSION="$MAJOR.$MINOR.$PATCH"
     fi
     # the + is here to make sure that this version is considered more recent than the svn