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

    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.