In the typical case, resources are incorporated into an application by passing the resource script file to the resource compiler. The resource compiler compiles the resource definitions and incorporates them into an executable file that has already been created.
Many of the functions that require a resource identifier, such as WinLoadString() and WinLoadPointer(), also accept the identifier of a resource file as one of their parameters. For resources that are incorporated into the application's .EXE file, this parameter should be specified as NULL. For example, to load a pointer from a resource defined within the .EXE file, the following call is used:
hPointer = WinLoadPointer(hDesktop, /* Desktop handle */
NULL, /* Within .EXE file */
DRAW); /* Resource symbolic name */
Other Presentation Manager functions that use this convention include WinLoadAccelTable(), WinLoadMenu() and WinCreateStdWindow().