import ctypes from ctypes import c_char_p, create_string_buffer import socket libc = ctypes.CDLL('libc.so.6') addr = "127.0.0.1" c_addr = c_char_p(addr) dst = create_string_buffer(100) ok = libc.inet_pton(socket.AF_INET, c_addr, dst) if 0 <= ok: print [ ord(x) for x in dst[:4] ]