in reply to comparing two ip addresses.

I use pack and unpack for IP adresses: 
my $ip = '83.1.1.1';
# turn to 32 bit integer
my $ip_int = unpack "N",pack "C4", split/\./,$ip;

[download]
$ip_int is now 1392574721, and 82.1.1.1 yields 1375797505.

--shmem 

_($_=" "x(1<<5)."?\n".q·/)Oo.  G°\        /
                              /\_¯/(q    /
----------------------------  \__(m.====·.(_("always off the crowd"))."·
");sub _{s./.($e="'Itrs `mnsgdq Gdbj O`qkdq")=~y/"-y/#-z/;$e.e && print}

In Section Seekers of Perl Wisdom