Is 'handle' synonymous to pointer in WinAPI?

Question

I've been reading some books on windows programming in C++ lately, and I have had some confusing understanding of some of the recurring concepts in WinAPI. For example, there are tons of data types that start with the handle keyword'H', are these supposed to be used like pointers? But then there are other data types that start with the pointer keyword 'P'. So I guess not. Then what is it exactly? And why were pointers to some data types given separate data types in the first place? For example, PCHAR could have easily designed to be CHAR*?

Answer 1

Handles used to be pointers in early versions of Windows but are not anymore. Think of them as a "cookie", a unique value that allows Windows to find back a resource that was allocated earlier. Like CreateFile() returns a new handle, you later use it in SetFilePointer() and ReadFile() to read data from that same file. And CloseHandle() to clean up the internal data structure, closing the file as well. Which is the general pattern, one api function to create the resource, one or more to use it and one to destroy it.

Yes, the types that start with P are pointer types. And yes, they are superfluous, it works just as well if you use the * yourself. Not actually sure why C programmers like to declare them, I personally think it reduces code readability and I always avoid them. But do note the compound types, like LPCWSTR, a "long pointer to a constant wide string". The L doesn't mean anything anymore, that dates back to the 16-bit version of Windows. But pointer, const and wide are important. I do use that typedef, not doing so will risk future portability problems. Which is the core reason these typedefs exist.