ExitProcessUINT

ExitProcessUINT is a colloquial term used to describe using the Windows API function ExitProcess with an unsigned integer exit code. There is no separate Windows API named ExitProcessUINT; the function ExitProcess itself accepts a parameter of type UINT, which is an unsigned 32-bit value on most Windows platforms.

The Windows API function ExitProcess terminates the calling process and terminates all of its threads. Its prototype is VOID ExitProcess(UINT uExitCode). The function does not return to the caller. The provided exit code is passed to the operating system and can be retrieved by a parent process using GetExitCodeProcess on the process handle, which yields a DWORD representing the exit status.

The exit code conventionally uses 0 to indicate success, while nonzero values indicate different failure conditions or status codes, though there is no universal standard across applications. Because ExitProcess ends the process immediately, some runtime cleanup that might be performed by higher-level libraries or the C runtime when exiting via return from main or exit may not occur. Therefore, it is typically used when the program needs to terminate in a controlled, low-level manner, with explicit acknowledgement of the exit code.

Related concepts include ExitThread, which terminates only the current thread, and TerminateProcess, which forcibly terminates a process from another handle and is generally more abrupt. For normal program termination through the C or C++ runtime, functions like exit or return from main may perform additional cleanup before ending the process.

Example usage (C): ExitProcess(0); This terminates the process with exit code 0.