Converting from string to int

I've been trying to figure out for 2 hours how to translate a series of chars (in a string) into int variables in C++. What I got this far is:

int x << (int)stringvar[5];

It builds, but it returns every character as a 0.

anyone got any ideas?

>>6
I thought about atoi for a moment, but was disgusted with this thought.  atoi is inherently dirty, C-like, .h-file including filth.  Learn to use C++ toolset when writing C++.