Flash cannot read a plain text file directly

Today, I knew that flash cannot read a plain text file directly.

The file content has to be:
1. variable format
value=32
2. xml format
<xml>32<xml>

but not only "32".

At least, I can't find any way to do that using AS2 now.

For as3 to read a file, you can look at the following link:
http://www.thekuroko.com/2007/05/26/reading-a-file-with-actionscript-3/