OpenVMS RTL String Manipulation

This document is a technical reference for the STR$ facility of the OpenVMS Run-Time Library. It covers:

• Overviews: A functional categorization of string routines, including mathematical operations, comparison, extraction, replacement, concatenation, copying, searching, and memory management.
• Conceptual Introduction: Detailed explanations of string semantics (fixed-length, varying-length, and dynamic-length strings), string descriptor classes, and how the Run-Time Library handles these descriptors for reading and writing.
• Programming Guidance: Best practices for efficiency, argument passing, error handling (specifically distinguishing between LIB$, STR$, and OTS$ facility behaviors), and the usage of the string zone for dynamic memory allocation.
• Reference Section: Exhaustive, alphabetically ordered documentation for each routine in the STR$ facility, including format, arguments, returned values, signaled conditions, and programming examples for each.