help with strip function

[gabejohnsonny21]

I have a text file which is written like this

a

---

I have a text file which is written like this:
a \t b \t c \t d
d \t c \t d \t a
a \t b \t d \t a

I want to take this into a list so I wrote:

1 2 3

while(len(a_contents) > 0):         list1.append(a_contents.strip())         a_contents = a.read(size2read)

But the empty spaces become part of the list elements
How do i fix this?

[menator01]

They appear to be tabs, not spaces

[gabejohnsonny21]

I change the strip parameter from blank to \t but it still include spaces in the list and also i want to remove the \n too