Question

The SafeHandleZeroOrMinusOneIsInvalid or similar classes cannot be used in a Portable Class Library targeting .NET 4.0 and Windows Store Apps.

Does anybody know why or how one could use this or use a different class?

Yes, I would like some unsafe stuff in a portable class library.

Answer 1

Portable is limited to the platforms that you are targeting. In this case, Windows Store apps doesn’t expose this type. It’s implementation is very simple, here’s one I just whipped up:

public abstract class SafeHandleZeroOrMinusOneIsInvalid : SafeHandle
{
    protected SafeHandleZeroOrMinusOneIsInvalid(bool ownsHandle)
        : base(IntPtr.Zero, ownsHandle)
    {
    }

    public override bool IsInvalid
    {
        get { return base.handle == IntPtr.Zero || base.handle == (IntPtr)(-1); }
    }
}