Share via

Memory-mapped Files

  • Article

Windows CE supports both named and unnamed file-mapping objects. Unnamed files provide a method both for interprocess communication and as a way to allocate virtual memory regions larger than the 32-MB slot size limit.

In Windows CE, unnamed, or page file backed, memory-mapped files are not backed up by a page file nor do they have to be unnamed. The name of this type of memory-mapped file comes from Windows NT where an application could use the paging file of the OS to create a huge, sparse array of virtual pages. The memory-mapped file was unnamed because a real file on the disk did not back it up. In Windows CE, the created object can have a name and you can pass that name to other processes so these processes can access the same object.

Note   Memory-mapped files are shared; therefore, they are not secure.

See Also

Memory Architecture

Last updated on Wednesday, April 13, 2005

© 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.