We had a spate of college & high school students getting their homework, projects , and exams done by the programmers on the forum.

Your question about the direction of a file read shouldn't come from a CNE or anybody who's programmed for a while - unless they are totally confused or are a student trying to get us to do what they were supposed to have learned.

All native file reads for every computer language I've messed with for 40+ years are forward. In C you can ungetc to move the pointer backward - but you are not reading, just moving the file pointer.

regards.