VMS Help RTL Routines, LIB$, LIB$ICHAR  *Conan The Librarian (sorry for the slow response - running on an old VAX)

    The Convert First Character of String to Integer routine converts
    the first character of a source string to an 8-bit ASCII integer
    extended to a longword.

    Format

      LIB$ICHAR  source-string

1 - Returns

    OpenVMS usage:longword_unsigned
    type:         longword (unsigned)
    access:       write only
    mechanism:    by value

    First character of the source string. This character is returned
    by LIB$ICHAR as an 8-bit ASCII value extended to a longword. If
    the source string has zero length, LIB$ICHAR returns a zero.

2 - Argument

 source-string

    OpenVMS usage:char_string
    type:         character string
    access:       read only
    mechanism:    by descriptor

    Source string whose first character is converted to an integer
    by LIB$ICHAR. The source-string argument is the address of a
    descriptor pointing to this source string.