The main application of the plugin is to provide a communication interface between V-Rep and (ROS). The aim is to control the V-Rep simulation externally using ROS messages and ROS services.
The latest versions of coppeliasim readme.txt includes version numbers as V4.4 instead of V4.4.0 and hence there is a parsing error. A simple if statement solved the bug.
I am unsure whether the changes made from vrep -> sim to make things compatible with coppeliasim should be a separate branch but I sent a pull request anyway.