Because the regular expression used as PKWK_CIDR_NETWORK_REGEX is the following:
"/^(\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3}\.\d{1,3})(?:\/([0-9.]+))?$/"
Which shorthands to:
"/^((\d{1,3}){4})(?:\/([0-9.]+))?$/"
An invalid IP address can be used in this check, but it's somewhat of a limitation of brackets for recursion. The following IP addresses are valid with the above regular expression as \d refers to numeric data.
The following IP addresses are valid with the regular expression used:
999.999.999.999 090.090.090.090 000.000.000.000
Again, it's not a HUGE thing but it will throw an error and waste processing time when ip2long is called and the (erroneous) IP address is used.
Regards,