role of message loop in this program ? and few more questions

Question

The following code works fine. It gives out the message when the user presses a key. But there are certain things I am not aware of. What is the role of Message Loop here ? I read that calling SetWindowsHookEx(...) registers a function with the windows and windows calls the appropriate function automatically when a event of registered type happens. No doubt that i don't see the output if don't give the message loop it's space.

#include<iostream>
#include <windows.h>
using namespace std;

HINSTANCE hinst = NULL;
static HHOOK handleKeyboardHook = NULL;
static LRESULT CALLBACK LowLevelKeyboardProc(int nCode, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam);

void setWinHook() {
  handleKeyboardHook = SetWindowsHookEx(WH_KEYBOARD_LL, LowLevelKeyboardProc,NULL, 0);
if(handleKeyboardHook == NULL) {
    cout << "is NULL";
} else {
    cout << "is not NULL";
}
  cout<<("Inside function setWinHook !");
}

static LRESULT CALLBACK LowLevelKeyboardProc(int nCode, WPARAM wParam, LPARAM lParam) {
 cout << ("You pressed a key !\n");
  return CallNextHookEx(handleKeyboardHook, nCode, wParam, lParam);
}

int WINAPI WinMain(HINSTANCE hInstance, HINSTANCE hPrevInstance, LPSTR lpCmdLine, int nCmdShow)
{
 handleKeyboardHook = SetWindowsHookEx(WH_KEYBOARD_LL, LowLevelKeyboardProc, hInstance, 0);
 MSG msg;
 while(GetMessage(&msg, NULL, 0, 0))
 {
   TranslateMessage(&msg);
   DispatchMessage(&msg);
 }
 return msg.wParam;
}

EDIT

Does exiting the program (closing the console window) unregister the hook ?

EDIT 2

what role does Dispatch Message play here ? According to doc it dispatches a message to window procedure,but here even if i exclude that,it doesn't effect the output.

Answer 1

All events in Windows, even the low-level keyboard event used in your example, is sent using the normal message events. So for the program to be able to sense keyboard events, it has to use an event loop processing messages.

Answer 2

Without a loop, the program would exit immediately, and the hook would be removed at once too. You cannot register a hook and exit — the system would become a mess if buggy programs were leaving too many forgotten hooks after them. Once your process dies, the hook is scheduled for removal.

I don't remember about low-level keyboard hook, but callbacks of many other hooks are only called inside GetMessage/PeekMessage, and not on some other thread, so just an infinite loop won't suffice — it has to be a message loop.

Answer 3

"what role does Dispatch Message play here ? According to doc it dispatches a message to window procedure,but here even if i exclude that,it doesn't effect the output."

DispatchMessage is pretty useless cos console window doesnt receive much messages. Only message received is when window loses focus.