Windows.h

Including results in including various other header files that are included directly or indirectly by . Many of these header files cannot be included on their own due to dependencies between the various header files. Notable included header files: Standard C Basic Extra OLE and COM ==Macros==

Several macros affect the definitions made by and the files it includes. • UNICODE; when defined, this causes the generic text datatype TCHAR to be a synonym of wide character| instead of character (computing)|, and all type-generic API functions and messages that work with text will be defined to the -W versions instead of the -A versions. It is similar to the windows C runtime's _UNICODE macro. • RC_INVOKED defined when the resource compiler () is in use instead of a C compiler. • WINVER used to enable features only available in newer operating systems. Define it to 0x0501 for Windows XP, and 0x0600 for Windows Vista. • WIN32_LEAN_AND_MEAN used to reduce the size of the header files and speed up compilation. Excludes things like cryptography, DDE, RPC, the Windows Shell and Winsock. ==Other languages==

Microsoft has plans to update the Windows API for modern C++ usage with their win32metadata project. Currently, there is C++/WinRT and "Windows Implementation Library" (WIL) for doing this in modern C++. Microsoft has also created bindings for other languages, including C# and Rust for calling the Win32 API. ==See also==