Johan Danielsson wrote:
[ ... ]
> In practice, has this syntax ever been used the way it's intended? I
> know I'm lazy so I write 127.1 instead of 127.0.0.1, but that's about
> as useful as I can imagine it to be.

Writing an IP address as an int32 isn't very convenient for humans, no.

On the other hand, some people find writing netmasks in hex (eg, 0xffffff00) 
easier than writing them as a dotted-quad, and it's much easier for a program 
to work with either IPs or netmasks as (hex) integers.

-- 
-Chuck