Windows Messages
Windows Messages are the oldest type of IPC in Windows. They may not be the best choice when writing systems software, but they can be helpful. More importantly, they are extremely fast and lightweight. However, as the name suggests, they are a Windows-only feature.
Messages work with windows. I do not mean the operating system; I am talking about the screens on your monitor. Almost everything on the GUI in Windows is a window. The windows obviously are, but so are buttons, edit boxes, text boxes, sliders, and so on. The operating system communicates with your application by sending messages to a window. Your application has at least one main window, which then distributes the message to the subwindows or handles the messages for those subwindows. However, each window can have its own message-handling logic.
Since messages work with graphical screen elements, such as buttons, labels, and list boxes, you might think they cannot be used on console applications...