Since you need to generate valid IP addresses - rejecting nonsense IP's like 192.168.3.256, and following up on grinder's quest, I offer the following code, that uses Net::IP:

use strict;
use Net::IP;

while (<DATA>){
  chomp;
  generate_range($_);
}

sub generate_range{
  my $range =shift;
  $range =~s/#.*//;
  print "\n------ $range -------\n";
  my ($lo,$hi);
  for (split /\./,$range,4){
    my ($l,$h) = split /-/;
     ## print qq[  $_;   L=$l   H=$h\n] ;
    $lo .= "$l.";
    $hi .= ($h || $l ) . ".";
  }
  chop for ($lo, $hi); # Drop tralining dots
  print " $lo - $hi; \n";

  my $ip = new Net::IP ("$lo - $hi") || die  "No IP$!";
  print ( "Number of IPs=" . $ip->size() . "\n");

  my $count=0;
  do {
        print $ip->ip(), "\t";
     } while (++$ip && $count++ <= 20);
  print "\n";
}

__DATA__
172.17.119.2 # Comments are here...
172.17.119.4-5 # Comments are here...
172.19-21.254.2-3 # Comments are here...
192.168.1.1-3 # Comments are here...
[download]

Limiting the output to 20 printed IP's, the output looks like :

------ 172.17.119.2  -------
 172.17.119.2  - 172.17.119.2 ;
Number of IPs=1
172.17.119.2

------ 172.17.119.4-5  -------
 172.17.119.4 - 172.17.119.5 ;
Number of IPs=2
172.17.119.4    172.17.119.5

------ 172.19-21.254.2-3  -------
 172.19.254.2 - 172.21.254.3 ;
Number of IPs=131074
172.19.254.2    172.19.254.3    172.19.254.4    172.19.254.5    172.19
+.254.6    172.19.254.7    172.
19.254.8        172.19.254.9    172.19.254.10   172.19.254.11   172.19
+.254.12   172.19.254.13   172.
19.254.14       172.19.254.15   172.19.254.16   172.19.254.17   172.19
+.254.18   172.19.254.19   172.
19.254.20       172.19.254.21   172.19.254.22   172.19.254.23

------ 192.168.1.1-3  -------
 192.168.1.1 - 192.168.1.3 ;
Number of IPs=3
192.168.1.1     192.168.1.2     192.168.1.3
[download]

I verified the correct generation of the IP sequence:
172.19.255.0 .. 172.19.255.1