inet_aton() takes a dotted quad and can return the host name using gethostbyaddr(). If you want a dotted quad returned, then use gethostbyname() and inet_ntoa:

use strict;
use Socket;

my $p  = gethostbyname('localhost');
my $ip = inet_ntoa($p);
print "$ip\n";
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Here is a sample use of inet_aton():

perl -MSocket -le 'print scalar gethostbyaddr(inet_aton("127.0.0.1"),A
+F_INET)'
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I hope that answers your question.

Jeff

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