look at these fools

https://github.com/zear/sabre/blob/master/libzip/bits.c#L99

>>10

So not only is there an assumption of 8-bit bytes, but that unsigned short is at least the size of 2 chars.

No, sizeof(char) is always 1. You need at least 16 bits to represent USHRT_MAX, and 8 * 2 * 1 happens to be 16.

>>13
Yes, because the input and output format should depend on the machine.