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winapihandlehwnd

In Windows, is a HANDLE an address in a process' VAS or an independent index into something else?

Simply put, if I were to call some API returning a handle, such as GetActiveWindow(), which would give me a handle of type HWND, what do I get back? Is it a unique address in the process' VAS, or a unique index into some OS structure? Or something else?

Solution

  • An opaque integer identifier that has no meaning or use outside the API calls it's designed to work with - IOW, there's no way of knowing most of the time, and most of the time you shouldn't care. :-)