[Tutor] How do I save the output of the rotor module?

[Mike Faire]

Hi everyone!

I wrote a simple script to get acquainted with the rotor module.
Encrypting and decrypting was simple enough.
However, once I save the encrypted list to a file,
it will not decrypt correctly beyond the first newline.

Here is the code:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import rotor

contents = ["This is a line of text\n", "including newlines\n", "for 
rotor testing."]
print contents   # shows a list of three strings
encon = []
rt = rotor.newrotor('606')
for item in contents:
     encon.append(rt.encrypt(item))
print encon

# at this point, print encon shows a list of three strings, encrypted

fh = open('text.txt', 'w')
fh.writelines(encon)          # write to a file
fh.close()
fh = open('text.txt', 'r')
incoming = fh.readlines()     # read from a file
fh.close()
print incoming

# after writing the strings to disk and then reading them back in
# again, print incoming shows a list comprised of one large string

after = []
for item in incoming:
     after.append(rt.decrypt(item))
print after

# the one large string will only decrypt correctly as far as the
# first newline

Do I need to use pickle for that list?
If they are strings, why does it matter that
they happen to contain representations of binary data?

TIA

Mike