Windows handles can be handles to a number of different types of objects. Generic operations which can be performed for any type of handle: * Closing the handl

Windows handles can be handles to a number of different types of objects. Generic operations which can be performed for any type of handle: * Closing the handle: Release any kernel resources associated with the the handle * Comparing to other handles * Duplicating, e.g. duplicating a handle to be used by another process. This allow a process to create a less privileged process and only pass handles with certain privileges to the process. * Get/set handle flags, e-g- flag which indicates whether the handle will be inherited by child processes. For each object type a number of object type specific operations can be used in addition to the above, e.g. file read/write for files or send/receive for sockets. Regardless of whether a handle is for a file, a socket, window, mutex or something else, the generic functions such as close will always work.