windows.h

windows.h is a Windows-specific header file for the C and C++ programming languages which contains declarations for all of the functions in the Windows API, all the common macros used by Windows programmers, and all the data types used by the various functions and subsystems. It defines a very large number of Windows specific functions that can be used in C. The Win32 API can be added to a C programming project by including the <windows.h> header file and linking to the appropriate libraries. To use functions in xxxx.dll, the program must be linked to xxxx.lib (or libxxxx.dll.a in MinGW). Some headers are not associated with a .dll but with a static library (e.g. scrnsave.h needs scrnsave.lib).

Child header files

There are a number of child header files that are automatically included with windows.h. Many of these files cannot simply be included by themselves (they are not self-contained), because of dependencies.

windows.h may include any of the following header files:

• excpt.h – Exception handling
• stdarg.h – variable-argument functions (standard C header)
• windef.h – various macros and types
• winnt.h – various macros and types (for Windows NT)
• basetsd.h – various types
• guiddef.h – the GUID type
• ctype.h – character classification (standard C header)
• string.h – strings and buffers (standard C header)
• winbase.h – kernel32.dll: kernel services; advapi32.dll:kernel services(e.g. CreateProcessAsUser function), access control(e.g. AdjustTokenGroups function).
• winerror.h – Windows error codes
• wingdi.h – GDI (Graphics Device Interface)
• winuser.h – user32.dll: user services
• winnls.h – NLS (Native Language Support)
• wincon.h – console services
• winver.h – version information
• winreg.h – Windows registry
• winnetwk.h – WNet (Windows Networking)
• winsvc.h – Windows services and the SCM (Service Control Manager)
• imm.h – IME (Input Method Editor)

Extra includes

• cderr.h – CommDlgExtendedError function error codes
• commdlg.h – Common Dialog Boxes
• dde.h – DDE (Dynamic Data Exchange)
• ddeml.h – DDE Management Library
• dlgs.h – various constants for Common Dialog Boxes
• lzexpand.h – LZ (Lempel-Ziv) compression/decompression
• mmsystem.h – Windows Multimedia
• nb30.h – NetBIOS
• rpc.h – RPC (Remote procedure call)
• shellapi.h – Windows Shell API
• wincrypt.h – Cryptographic API
• winperf.h – Performance monitoring
• winresrc.h – used in resources
• winsock.h – Winsock (Windows Sockets), version 1.1
• winspool.h – Print Spooler
• winbgim.h – Standard graphics library

OLE and COM

• ole2.h – OLE (Object Linking and Embedding)
• objbase.h – COM (Component Object Model)
• oleauto.h – OLE Automation
• olectlid.h – various GUID definitions

See also

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