well, basically it depends what data does ur flat file consists of...
if it is just normal strings n endline char at the end...
ie. a
b
c
u could just use bufferedreader
if it is a whole
string that is seperated by deliminators... and u wish to get each character out.. then u use stringtokenizer
ie a,b,c,d,e
bufferedreader code
stringtokenizer code
do a search on these topics.. there are lots of examples about bufferedreader and stringtokenizer.. also .. read up on the API Index..