SSH_BIND_OPTIONS_BINDPORT type confusion

[Mike Jones <mrjones@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello,

I don't consider this a bug in any way because it is clearly documented
(and I need to learn to read better... <ahem>).
When setting up a server and defining the port number to be used,
ssh_bind_options_set() takes an 'unsigned int'.

SSH_BIND_OPTIONS_BINDPORT The port to bind (unsigned int)

Port numbers range from [0..65535] which fits in an unsigned short.
That's how my particular application stores them.

The documentation says the parameter is 'unsigned int', but the function
actually  takes the value as a void pointer.
You can pass in anything, but the code inside the function will cast
that to an (int *) and then mask off the low-order 2 bytes (i.e. back to
an unsigned short).

unsigned short port = 2000;
ssh_bind_options_set( SSH_BIND_OPTIONS_BINDPORT, &port );  // oops...  
&port will be cast to (int *) inside

On a little-endian (e.g. Intel x86) platform, we get away with this.
On a big-endian (e.g. Sun sparc) platform, the cast to (int *) changes
the byte order and it ends up masking off the other 2 bytes of whatever
happens to be there on the stack next to the short, which is the wrong
value, of course.

My "fix" was to just introduce a temporary variable of type int, which
pleases both architectures.

I am just curious to understand why this would not be passed as an
'unsigned short' to avoid confusion and the potentially problematic
cast/masking.

Thanks!

Mike Jones