[Zope] Reading and parsing a text file object

Hi, I am new to Zope (but familiar with Python) and have a question. I have a text file in a folder and I would like to parse its content, and I wanted to put the text in a string variable. I understand I can access the content through file.data or better str(file.data). However, the string I obtain has no carriage returns anymore, they are replaced by a space. This is annoying because I cannot split the file line by line. Is there a "trick" I do not know? Or is there a better way to parse the content of a text file object? Any advice would be very appreciated. Thanks, Eric