Not too many applications for the Atoms I could come with. Direct DDE programming with atoms hardly fascinates any VFP programmer :)
Atoms can be used in a way similar to public variables for saving different states of the application. Atom name stays in the local atom table until the application terminates.
If you want to prevent users starting application B prior to starting application A, make the A to create a global atom that can be used by application B as a confirmation that application A has started.
Knowing atoms created by specific applications, one may guess about those applications. For example, atom "FireFox" appears and stays in the global table when the FireFox browser starts. By itself, this knowledge is rather useless. In certain circumstances, who knows, it can make a difference.
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The names of all registered window classes are kept in an atom table internal to USER32. The value returned by the RegisterClass function is that atom. You can also retrieve the atom for a window class by asking a window of that class for its class atom via GetClassWord(hwnd, GCW_ATOM).
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