Global Atom Table

The system global atom table, which can contain up to 37 entries, is available to all applications. When an application places a string in the global atom table, the system generates an atom that is unique throughout the system. Any application that has the atom can obtain the string it identifies by querying the global atom table.

An application that defines a private clipboard-data format or DDE-data format for sharing data with other applications should place the format name in the global atom table. This technique prevents conflicts with the names of formats defined by the system or by other applications, and makes the identifiers (atoms) for the messages or formats available to the other applications.