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There are three memory types, heap, memory mapped files and virtual memory.What is difference between virtual memory and memory mapped files?

user2935881
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    Read the documentation: [VirtualAlloc()](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa366887(v=vs.85).ASPX) vs. [MapViewOfFile()](http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa366761(v=vs.85).aspx) – WhozCraig Oct 30 '13 at 15:18

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MMF can be shared between processes. Virtual memory allocated with VirtualAlloc or VirtualAllocEx is accessible only from one process.

"A memory-mapped file contains the contents of a file in virtual memory. This mapping between a file and memory space enables an application, including multiple processes, to modify the file by reading and writing directly to the memory."

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd997372.aspx

Motomotes
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All of the memory is virtual. VirtualAlloc is a way to allocate some memory in your process. (The heap manager uses it.)

Memory mapped files is a way to allocate some memory that can be used to access a file and can be shared by multiple processes.

ScottMcP-MVP
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