This topic pertains only to applications written in C++. For an introduction to programming for DirectX in Visual Basic, see Visual Basic Programming Topics.

All COM interface methods described in this document are shown using C++ class names. This naming convention is used for consistency and to differentiate between methods used for different DirectX objects that use the same name, such as QueryInterface, AddRef, and Release. This convention does not mean that you can use these methods only with C++.

The syntax for the methods also uses C++ conventions. It does not include the this pointer to the interface. When programming in C, the pointer to the interface must be included in each method. The following example shows the C++ syntax for the IDirectDraw7::GetCaps method:

HRESULT GetCaps(
  LPDDCAPS lpDDDriverCaps,  
  LPDDCAPS lpDDHELCaps  
);

The same example using C syntax would look like this:

HRESULT GetCaps(
  LPDIRECTDRAW7 lpDD,    
  LPDDCAPS lpDDDriverCaps,  
  LPDDCAPS lpDDHELCaps  
);

The lpDD parameter is a pointer to the DirectDraw interface that represents the DirectDraw object.