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windowsoperating-systemcopyclipboard
Hot Cool Stud
Hot Cool Stud

Reputation: 1205

How data is stored in windows clipboard

Whenever we copy any multimedia file or any file except text (Not sure about it) in clipboard , does it stores the address of file or data copy because whenever we copy any movie of like 3 GB , C disk size doesn't increases it means clipboard stores the address not the copy .Is it true ???

Upvotes: 6

Views: 8913

Answers (3)

Mano KJ
Mano KJ

Reputation: 11

@Hot Cool stud :

To copy the path of a file/folder

Press Shift Down, select the file or folder, Right Click, you will see an extra menu_option as "Copy as path". Select it, and the path is copied to the clipboard

Upvotes: 1

Chris Thornton
Chris Thornton

Reputation: 15817

If you're copying files, you're dealing with file pointers like HDrop, which take almost no space. And almost no time to perform the copy. If you actually had to wait for 3 GB to be copied into a memory buffer, you would be waiting a long time, there would be a lot of I/O, and unless you had a lot of memory, your system would need to utilize pagefile space, thereby causing even more I/O.
You should also realize that unlike a text/HTML/RTF/graphic copy (where the data is actually on the clipboard), the clipboard cannot be used as a safety net. With text, you can copy, then delete the text, and paste it to get it back. Not so with files. If you copy a file, then delete that file, you won't be able to paste it. This may seem obvious, but it's important to understand when you're using any kind of clipboard manager that lets you go back and paste prior clips. You can paste a file pointer from 3 days ago, for example, but the result won't be that file from 3 days ago. It'll be whatever that file pointer references on today's disk.

Upvotes: 8

Leo Chapiro
Leo Chapiro

Reputation: 13979

 does it stores the address of file

Basically yes, but not the really address but so-called handle of the file.

It's an abstract reference value to a resource, often memory or an open file, or a pipe.

Properly, in Windows, (and generally in computing) a handle is an abstraction which hides a real memory address from the API user, allowing the system to reorganize physical memory transparently to the program. Resolving a handle into a pointer locks the memory, and releasing the handle invalidates the pointer. In this case think of it as an index into a table of pointers. You use the index for the system API calls, and the system can change the pointer in the table at will.

You can take a look at this article if you want to know how exactly the clipboard works: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ntdebugging/archive/2012/03/16/how-the-clipboard-works-part-1.aspx

Upvotes: 3

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