I use a regular expression when os support may not be available - RE is available in most languages, including C/C++/Java/Python/Perl/bash/.... The following python code builds the RE at startup, the resulting RE source is a humdinger - but once compiled by the re engine is as fast as native code.
PAT_IP4 = r'\.'.join([r'(?:\d|[1-9]\d|1\d\d|2[0-4]\d|25[0-5])']*4)
RE_IP4 = re.compile(PAT_IP4+'$')
RE_IP6 = re.compile( '(?:%(hex4)s:){6}%(ls32)s$'
'|::(?:%(hex4)s:){5}%(ls32)s$'
'|(?:%(hex4)s)?::(?:%(hex4)s:){4}%(ls32)s$'
'|(?:(?:%(hex4)s:){0,1}%(hex4)s)?::(?:%(hex4)s:){3}%(ls32)s$'
'|(?:(?:%(hex4)s:){0,2}%(hex4)s)?::(?:%(hex4)s:){2}%(ls32)s$'
'|(?:(?:%(hex4)s:){0,3}%(hex4)s)?::%(hex4)s:%(ls32)s$'
'|(?:(?:%(hex4)s:){0,4}%(hex4)s)?::%(ls32)s$'
'|(?:(?:%(hex4)s:){0,5}%(hex4)s)?::%(hex4)s$'
'|(?:(?:%(hex4)s:){0,6}%(hex4)s)?::$'
% {
'ls32': r'(?:[0-9a-f]{1,4}:[0-9a-f]{1,4}|%s)'%PAT_IP4,
'hex4': r'[0-9a-f]{1,4}'
}, re.IGNORECASE)
