socket.inet_aton - bug?

[Uwe Mayer]

Hi,

socket.inet_ntoa() accepts the string '\xff\xff\xff\xff' which is 
excactly the same i'd expect socket.inet_aton('255.255.255.255') to 
produce if it accepted the string '255.255.255.255' as an IP adress.
socket.inet_aton() dies with socket.error "illegal IP adress".

i know this is no valid ip adress, but it is a valid netmask. the 
purpose of converting the netmask to a binary format was that i wanted 
to isolate the subnet of an ip adress.
i wanted to use test_ip & netmask == ip_range to allow subnets to access 
a tcp server. 
is there another way of controlling this or why does socket.inet_aton() 
behave like that?

Ciao
Uwe