I want a java program that reads a user specified filename from the current directory (the same directory where the .class file is run).
In other words, if the user
The current directory is not (necessarily) the directory the .class file is in. It's working directory of the process. (ie: the directory you were in when you started the JVM)
You can load files from the same directory* as the .class file with getResourceAsStream(). That'll give you an InputStream which you can convert to a Reader with InputStreamReader.
*Note that this "directory" may actually be a jar file, depending on where the class was loaded from.