While not directly answering your question, once the day's frustration has worn off, you might find the "Don't Use Regular Expressions To Parse IP Addresses!" thread to be of some interest or value.
  cheers,
  ybiC

  striving toward Perl Adept
  (it's pronounced "why-bick")

In reply to Re: Reg Ex to find IP address in range (link to relevant thread) by ybiC
in thread Reg Ex to find IP address in range by stew

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