perl -le '$lo = 127.0.0.1; $l = (gethostbyname("localhost"))[4];print 
+"yup" if $lo eq $l'
yup
[download]

Anyways, it's a packed structure of bytes. To get back what you expected, use the %v format directive of sprintf:

perl -le 'printf "%vd\n", (gethostbyname("localhost"))[4]'
127.0.0.1
[download]

--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}