I/O Asynchronous Program

 

typedef struct _OVERLAPPED {
  ULONG_PTR Internal;
  ULONG_PTR InternalHigh;
  union {
    struct {
      DWORD Offset;
      DWORD OffsetHigh;
    };
    PVOID  Pointer;
  };
  HANDLE    hEvent;
} OVERLAPPED, *LPOVERLAPPED;

Any unused members of this structure should always be initialized to zero before the structure is used in a function call. Otherwise, the function may fail and return ERROR_INVALID_PARAMETER.

There are two types of input/output (I/O) synchronization: synchronous I/O and asynchronous I/O. Asynchronous I/O is also referred to as overlapped I/O.