The Old New Thing

What was the difference between LocalAlloc and GlobalAlloc?

November 1, 2004 Nov 1, 2004 11/1/04

Raymond Chen

Back in the days of 16-bit Windows, the difference was significant. In 16-bit Windows, memory was accessed through values called "selectors", each of which could address up to 64K. There was a default selector called the "data selector"; operations on so-called "near pointers" were performed relative to the data selector. For example, if you...