You shouldn't need to do this. gethostbyname() should in fact return only the packed ip when referenced as a scalar

my $packedIP = gethostbyname("www.perlmonks.org");
print join('.', unpack("C4", $packedIP)), "\n";
[download]

This should work like a champ, although (myself and OzzyOzbourne were talking about this in the chatterbox), someone (tilly?) mentioned that in 5.6 the unpack isn't necessary. I can't confirm this though.