[worldmerge]

How does this work?

[jhugo]

IPv4 addresses are 32-bit numbers, the dotted-decimal representation is just a common way to represent those numbers.

[throwaway787544]

In particular inet_aton() function considers a single integer to be the 32bit form. Accepts decimal, octal, and hex. https://linux.die.net/man/3/inet_aton