Printing after reading from a file using READLINE() yields extra spaces

[Paul Herring]

I have a text file I am reading from. 

When printing after reading from the file using READLINE() there are extra spaces between characters. e.g. characters appears as ' c h a r a c t e r s'

The same code works as expected (i.e. no extra spaces) with IDLE.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated...