I'm afraid I have to disagree, Roland. According to Microsoft's WinAPI documentation (URL follows), the type definition HANDLE (a generic handle) is a PVOID, and PVOID is defined as *void (pointer to any data type). Thus, all handles are the same size as memory pointers, so in a 64-bit process all handles are 64-bit. Type definitions for specific handle types (HCURSOR, HICON, HBITMAP, HMONITOR, etc.) are all defined as HANDLE, aka PVOID, aka *void, so Longptr is the ideal PB datatype to use for both Windows handles and memory pointers in both 32-bit and 64-bit.



https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/winprog/windows-data-types

Interesting. All my examples work in 64bit using long. I just created a simple app with a window that has a button and listbox. The button has this:



Longptr pWindow

pWindow = Handle(Parent)

lb_1.AddItem(String(pWindow))



I generated 32bit and 64bit exes. The 32bit handle is 6 digits and the 64bit handle is 7 digits.



I checked the IDE Browser window and the Handle function is defined as returning longptr despite what the help file says. I guess technically they should be longptr but in practice long will work in most cases.



Thanks for pointing this out.

No problem. I think using Long works in many (but not all) cases because the handle values rarely, if ever, exceed the capacity of a 32-bit integer... at least in what I've seen to date when examining handle values in 64-bit processes. I wish Appeon would correct the Handle PowerScript tunction to return Longptr instead of Long.



I'm a little surprised you don't run into runtime errors due to inconsistencies in the amount of data passed on the execution call stack between PB and Windows, however.



The size of a WinAPI structure that contains a handle increases when moving from 32-bit to 64-bit because the size of the structure element that contains the handle increases. Padding within the structure to align members may also be affected. This was really brought home when attempting to use a FLASHWINFO structure with the FlashWindowEx API function in a PB 64-bit application, so I used it as an example in my tutorial series about using the Windows API from PowerBuilder.