use URI;
use Socket;

my $url = "http://www.yahoo.com/whatever/foo?bar=baz

# Get the host out of the URL string
my $uri = URI->new($url);
my $host = $url->host;

# Get the IP address for the host
my $packed_ip = gethostbyname($host)
	or die "Unable to resolve '$host'\n";
my $ipaddr = inetntoa($packed_ip);

print "Got '$ipaddr' for host '$host'\n";