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by ms2 4036 days ago
That's true for some handles in Win32, but (since we're talking about classic MacOS) Win16 handles were usually NEAR pointers inside kernel segments.
1 comments

True! That was a disaster; only 64K (16 bits) handles were possible across all processes. Many APIs had to be deprecated and redesigned when it went 32-bit.

I've argued for using uuids for handles from here on out. They are endless; no effort to coordinate handle spaces is ever needed; they work locally and on the network; on some architectures they are even a register width scalar.