| Platform SDK: Interprocess Communications |
Clients and servers when working with mailslots should use only the functions discussed in the following tables. You should not use other functions, even if they accept file handles or filenames as arguments.
Mailslot servers have exclusive use of three functions, as shown in the following table.
| Function | Description |
|---|---|
| CreateMailslot | Creates a mailslot and returns a mailslot handle. |
| GetMailslotInfo | Retrieves the maximum message size, the mailslot size, the size of the next message in the mailslot, the number of messages in the mailslot, and the amount of time a read operation can wait for a message. |
| SetMailslotInfo | Changes the read time-out for a mailslot. |
The following functions are also used by mailslot servers.
| Function | Description |
|---|---|
| DuplicateHandle | Duplicates the mailslot handle. |
| ReadFile, ReadFileEx | Retrieves messages from a mailslot. |
| GetFileTime | Retrieves the date and time a mailslot was created. |
| SetFileTime | Sets the date and time a mailslot was created. |
| GetHandleInformation | Retrieves properties of the mailslot handle. |
| SetHandleInformation | Sets properties of the mailslot handle. |
A client process uses the following functions when interacting with a mailslot.
| Function | Description |
|---|---|
| CloseHandle | Closes a mailslot handle for a client process. |
| CreateFile | Creates a mailslot handle for a client process. |
| DuplicateHandle | Duplicates a mailslot handle. |
| WriteFile, WriteFileEx | Writes data to a mailslot. |