read resource fork

How do i read an entire resource fork, similar to reading the data fork,
irrespective of individual resources?

I admit i am somewhat less than a novice to the Macintosh Toolbox, so i
can't even figure out how to read individual resources; i've perused and
tried out the commands in MacPerl for that but i can't get them to work. 
However, there appear to be no commands to do a simple read of the fork
itself as if it were mere data.

If i could do this, i can load the resources myself (i know how to parse
the resource map and know the resource fork format), but mainly i want to
slurp two forks for comparison purposes.

David