Carets

A caret is a blinking line, block, or bitmap in the client area of a window. The caret typically indicates the place at which text or graphics will be inserted.

The following illustration shows some common variations in the appearance of the caret.

Applications can create a caret, change its blink time, and display, hide, or relocate the caret.

In This Section

Name	Description
About Carets	Discusses carets.
Using Carets	Code samples that show how to perform tasks related to carets.
Caret Reference	Contains the API reference.

Caret Functions

Name	Description
CreateCaret	Creates a new shape for the system caret and assigns ownership of the caret to the specified window. The caret shape can be a line, a block, or a bitmap.
DestroyCaret	Destroys the caret's current shape, frees the caret from the window, and removes the caret from the screen.
GetCaretBlinkTime	Retrieves the time required to invert the caret's pixels. The user can set this value.
GetCaretPos	Copies the caret's position to the specified POINT structure.
HideCaret	Removes the caret from the screen. Hiding a caret does not destroy its current shape or invalidate the insertion point.
SetCaretBlinkTime	Sets the caret blink time to the specified number of milliseconds. The blink time is the elapsed time, in milliseconds, required to invert the caret's pixels.
SetCaretPos	Moves the caret to the specified coordinates. If the window that owns the caret was created with the CS_OWNDC class style, then the specified coordinates are subject to the mapping mode of the device context associated with that window.
ShowCaret	Makes the caret visible on the screen at the caret's current position. When the caret becomes visible, it begins flashing automatically.