The best way to use buffers / streams/ strstreams

I have some confused with all of this. (C++)
I'd want to 'connect' the char data input with file.read() with the best way to work with it. What is ? stream, strstream, stringstream .... ?
And I dont want to do a copy, so is there a way to get the data to any place and work already with it?

I' d like to do something like this:
file.read(65536)
- file.data.get a float
- file.data.get a 10 float array
- file.data.get a 20 lenght string
- file.data.find 'b'
- file.data.find 'e'
- file.data.get a string from data from pos for 'b' to pos for 'e'

'data' would be the 'object' I'm searching...

In case of need to work with strings, must I to use cstring.h ? Can I avoid it ?
I'd want to do this with C++ and later with QT (But I'd want to learn first c++)

Any examples?
Thanks