Reading from a client side text file

Hi everyone, i know some forums dont like those that sign up simply to ask a question, but ive been a long time lurker and part time flash developer and have got stuck on an problem that i clearly dont fully understand the concepts of flash enough to solve so im hoping someone can help.

my problem is that i need my flash app (on the web accesses by users through browser) to read from a text file on the clients computer preferably by them browsing to it, but the catch is i dont want to upload it to the server to do so (although a last ditch upload/read/delete could work but not ideal), i have looked into filereference but cant hook that up correctly to read the file most help/tuts just continue on to an upload of some sort.

if its not possible in flash alone i was thinking some sort of php setup using externalaccess stuff to hook into flash

im sure theres a simple solution staring me in the face but im not seeing it so any help would be greatly appreciated