Is it possible in Windows to use part of memory as a virtual file

I'm using a commandline tool to do some processing on a file. The thing is that this file should not be stored on disk (security reason开发者_开发百科s). So I was wondering whether it's possible in Windows to use a part of memory as a virtual file that is accessible bu the commandline tool as if it was a real physical file.

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Yes, it's possible with things referred to as "ramdisks" usually. What's the best ramdisk for Windows? over at superuser.com has some links.

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Have you written the command line tool yourself? If so, you can simply allocate a section of memory to your program and use it in your processing. There's little reason to trick the app into thinking it's using a file on a physical disk. The specifics on how to do so depend on what language your app is written in.

If not, you'll need to create a RAM disk and tell the program to use that. Using a RAM disk on Windows requires third-party software; a comprehensive list of options is available here on Super User.

Note, though, neither using a RAM disk nor storing all of your data in memory will make it more secure. The information stored in RAM is just as accessible to prying eyes and malicious applications as data that is saved on the hard disk. Probably more so than data that has been deleted from the hard disk.

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If you need a ready to use application, there are several ramdisk applications (including free ones) on the market, and then your question here is offtopic. If you need to do this in code, than one of our virtual storage products (SolFS, CallbackDisk, Callback File System) will work, and Callback File System has a sample project that stores files in memory.

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If you're using .NET, you might look into MemoryStream.

Note Cody Gray's answer though, which is only too true insofar as having something in memory does not guarantee that it can't be compromised. Though opinions differ on this subject. Most people would argue that writing to disk is even less secure, especially in the age of wear-levelling where controlling what is deleted and what is not is practically impossible.
RAM has its own disadvantages, but on the positive side, what's gone is gone :-)