# thanks to jdporter and ikegami who have shown me a much better way to do this!
#
# Thanks to ikegami for the code example

use Socket qw( inet_aton inet_ntoa );

sub DottedQuadToLong {
 # Accepts triton.littlefish.ca
 # Accepts 24.72.30.83
 # Accepts 407379539
 # etc
 return unpack('N', inet_aton(shift)); 
}

sub LongToDottedQuad {
 return inet_ntoa(pack('N', shift)); 
}