Mailslot Operations

When working with mailslots, clients and servers should use only the functions discussed in the following tables. Do not use other functions, even if they accept file handles or file names as parameters, as they are not designed to work with mailslots.

Mailslot Server Functions

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.

 

Mailslot Client Functions

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.