March 3rd, 2005

The bonus window bytes at GWLP_USERDATA

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

The window manager provides a pointer-sized chunk of storage you can access via the GWLP_USERDATA constant. You pass it to the GetWindowLongPtr function and the SetWindowLongPtr function to read and write that value. Most of the time, all you need to attach to a window is a single pointer value anyway, so the free memory in GWLP_USERDATA is all you need.

Note that this value, like the other window extra bytes and the messages in the WM_USER range, belongs to the window class and not to the code that creates the window.

Category
Old New Thing
Topics
Code

Author

Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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