Randy KathMicrosoft Developer Network Technology Group
Created: February 9, 1993
Abstract
Determining which function or set of functions to use for managing memory in your application is difficult without a solid understanding of how each group of functions works and the overall impact they each have on the operating system. In an effort to simplify these decisions, this technical article focuses on the use of the memory-mapped file functions in Windows: the functions that are available, the way they are used, and the impact their use has on operating system resources. The following topics are discussed in this article:
- Introduction to managing memory in Windows operating systems
- What are memory-mapped files?
- How are memory-mapped files implemented?
- Sharing memory with memory-mapped files
- Using memory-mapped file functions
In addition to this technical article, a sample application called ProcessWalker is included on the Microsoft Developer Network CD. This sample application is useful for exploring the behavior of memory-mapped files in a process, and it provides several useful implementation examples.