What, exactly is a handle?

[Al Smith]

What exactly is a handle to a form, textbox, etc.?
Is it an address?
An offset in some code?
A pointer to the entry point of a DLL?
Or something completely different?
Thanks,
Al.



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[chrisjk]

It's something to open a door...

But in Windows, it's an identifyer for anything that is on the screen, be it forms, texboxes, combo, picture, everything has a handle apart from things like a label.

[LG]

Windows enumeretes any visual components created by applications and keeps it parameters in a special table in the memory.

So this handler is a identifier for the object and gives you an access to this object in the memory. You can say it is a pointer ( in C++ terms).

And chrisjk!

Label originaly has a handler (as soon as it is a visual object), it just not accessable directly in VB.