socket.inet_pton()

socket.inet_pton(address_family, ip_string)

Convert an IP address from its family-specific string format to a packed, binary format. inet_pton() is useful when a library or network protocol calls for an object of type struct in_addr (similar to inet_aton()) or struct in6_addr.

Supported values for address_family are currently AF_INET and AF_INET6. If the IP address string ip_string is invalid, OSError will be raised. Note that exactly what is valid depends on both the value of address_family and the underlying implementation of inet_pton().

Availability: Unix (maybe not all platforms), Windows.