reading bytes from binary file to long int
<p>I have two question :</p>

<ul>
<li><p>I have a data on binary file. I want read first 8 bytes to signed long int by using read function but I could not .  Do you know how can I do that ? </p></li>
<li><p>How can directly read a block of data to string ?
Can I read like as shown in 
ex : </p>

<pre><code> ifstream is;
 is.open ("test.txt", ios::binary );

 string str ;
 is. read ( str.c_str, 40 ) ; // 40 bytes should be read
</code></pre></li>
</ul>
