[RESOLVED] Unable to delete Atom with GlobalDeleteAtom

[osulliga]

I have created the atom and I know how to get the name of the atom, but I can't for some reason delete the atom that I created.

atomName = "KeyPress"

atomAvail = GlobalFindAtom(atomName)
(atomAvail should be a 0 to let me know that the Atom is available, but this only worked the first time and now always has the integer value assigned to it regardless of GlobalDeleteAtom call)

atomNum = GlobalAddAtom(atomName)


GlobalDeleteAtom (atomNum)

end function

What am I doing wrong?

[LaVolpe]

Here is some comments from MSDN

The string associated with the atom is not deleted from memory until its reference count is zero. For more information, see the GlobalDeleteAtom function.

Global atoms are not deleted automatically when the application terminates. For every call to the GlobalAddAtom function, there must be a corresponding call to the GlobalDeleteAtom function.

Reading the above, you may not have all instances deleted.

[osulliga]

Thank you for the information. I am teaching myself API and I know I am not going to master it in a couple of days.

Do you know if there is a way to determine the number of instances of the Atom exist? Should I just write an ad hoc procedure to GlobalDeleteAtom to loop until GlobalFindAtom = 0?

[osulliga]

I just tried my idea of using a loop to make sure that there are no instances of the atom I created and it worked and you were right as to the cause of my problem and helped guide me to a solution. Thanks again and for those that see this and may be an API newbie, this is what I did...

(In VB)
Do Until GlobalFindAtom = 0
GlobalDeleteAtom(***whatever your atom number variable is here*****)
Loop

[LaVolpe]

Thank you for the information. I am teaching myself API and I know I am not going to master it in a couple of days.

Do you know if there is a way to determine the number of instances of the Atom exist? Should I just write an ad hoc procedure to GlobalDeleteAtom to loop until GlobalFindAtom = 0?

Glad you resolved your problem. But to answer the above question, not off the top of my head. Per MSDN documentation, when you delete the atom, the return value is always zero which doesn't help much. Some APIs will return a value of how many instances are left, and in other cases, there may be APIs created just for that purpose. I have been using APIs for decades, but I am not fluent with the GlobalAtom APIs.

[osulliga]

Do you know of some good resources I can read up on for API? Most of the coding books that I have either pertain to VB, C#, .Net, SQL, etc.

Thanks again.

[LaVolpe]

Honestly, no. APIs have 2 challenges: 1) Knowing they exist and 2) knowing how to use them.

Here are a couple of sites that can help
1. The API List at allapi.net. Bookmark it. Has a majority of the most common/widely-used APIs with examples and documentation how to use them. Also has the API Guide download which is basically a database and app that contains all the APIs you will see on that site.

2. The API Viewer. A must for programmers. Contains all the API declarations in item 1 above and more. Contains 1000's of constants.

3. Forums like this one

4. The ultimate guide for all Microsoft APIs: MSDN.com, but documentation is not in VB-lingo so it takes some getting used to. Enter API or constant in its search engine.

5. Google. Entering the API name along with "visual basic" should find you several more usage examples of whatever API you are looking for.
Example Google search for DeleteAtom: DeleteAtom API "Visual Basic"
Example Google search for constant WM_APP: Const WM_APP
The above search formats will return more VB examples than non-VB examples

6. One of my favorite bookmarks: http://vbnet.mvps.org/index.html

[osulliga]

Thanks for the info, I do have the API Viewer and API guide applications, and have been very fond of this website and google.

The one site that I haven't used is one you had listed as your favorite. I now have added that to my bookmarks for quicker reference.

Thanks again.

[LaVolpe]

Well if you like that bookmark, here is another that I use almost exclusively for GDI+ APIs. That site has much more than GDI+.