Here is how to convert from a dot quad to the real unsigned 32 bit integer it represents and back again

use Socket;
for my $dot_quad ( "0.0.0.1", "127.0.0.1", "192.168.0.1" ) {
    my $integer = unpack "N", inet_aton($dot_quad);
    my $ip = inet_ntoa(pack "N", $integer);
    print "$ip\t int:$integer\n";
}
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