Conference turris::c_plus_plus

    Well, I had something like this in my program that got executed at some
    point prior to calling ifstream::open():

        buffer = new char [strlen(value)];

        strcpy(buffer, value);

    It just so happened in this particular case that the null byte ended up
    clearing the "blockSize" field in the header of a memory block
    maintained by LIB$VM_MALLOC().
    
    When ifstream::open() got called, it in turn called the C RTL routine
    open().  In open(), the RMS blocks get allocated and initialized before
    SYS$OPEN() is called.  calloc() (which calls LIB$VM_CALLOC()) is called
    to allocate the RMS blocks.  When the NAM block got allocated,
    LIB$VM_MALLOC() returned the block with the incorrect zeroed block
    size, then LIB$VM_CALLOC() didn't clear anything because the block size
    was zero.  So, the NAM block fields had junk in them and this is what
    caused the RMS$_RLF error returned by SYS$OPEN().

    As usual, just when I begin to suspect the problem is in someone else's
    code, it winds up being my problem all along.

    Thanks to Duane for the help in setting up so I could find the cause of
    this bizarre problem.

    Roy