reading ascii-0

[Davy Durham]

Hey,
 I was wondering if it's possible to make the build-in 'read' command 
not always stop at ascii 0.

I've got a file "foo" with "asdf\0qwer\n" in it and when I do:
  read x < foo
then
  echo ${#x}
always returns 4 instead of 9 or 10 because it stopped after "asdf" at 
the null char

I've played with setting $IFS, and with -r and -d on the read command 
itself, but nothing seems to work.

Is this possible?

Thanks,
 Davy