Question

This is the method definition:

  [DllImport("user32.dll")]
    public static extern int SendMessage(IntPtr hWnd, int msg, IntPtr lparam, IntPtr wparam);

This is the call to SendMessage:

 //WM_COPY = 0x0301
 SendMessage(handle, WM_COPY, IntPtr.Zero, IntPtr.Zero);

This is how I am retrieving the data:

string text = System.Windows.Forms.Clipboard.GetText();

I’d like to do the same thing except that I don’t want the data to be copied to the clipboard. Is it possible to copy the data to some other part in memory? If so, how?

Answer 1

No. You can’t control what other application will do when it receives a message. You get whatever behavior target window has for that message and nothing else (unless you control the target too, than you can handle it yourself).

WM_COPY is just a message (also it is standard one and make sense to be handled in particular way) – some windows will handle it, some will not. As defined on MSDN WM_COPY will save text for edit control.

An application sends the WM_COPY message to an edit control or combo box to copy the current selection to the clipboard in CF_TEXT format.

If you are implementing your own application that handles WM_COPY you can copy data wherever you want, also if sub-classing edit controls it would make a lot of sense to keep default behavior…