1. A means of uniquely identifying an object, or a property of an object. In programming, a handle is a pointer to a pointer to a variable. This level of indirection can simplify the passing of references to the variable between parts of the program.

2. In a graphical environment, a marker associated with an image. One very common form is as a small square in the border of a window: different handles may be used to drag the window, so changing its position, to reshape the window, so changing its aspect ratio, or to rescale the window, so changing the size of its contents. See also bottom-up parsing.