How to identify and remove newline and white spaces?

To remove all extra space and \n from your string-

NSString* result = [yourString stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet whitespaceAndNewlineCharacterSet]];

than prepare your contentsOfFile Array.

If you want an array without whitespace:

NSString *string = @"Hello, World!";
NSCharacterSet *separator = [NSCharacterSet whitespaceAndNewlineCharacterSet];
NSArray *stringComponents = [string componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:separator];

stringByTrimmingCharachersInSet: only removes desired characters from the end and the beginning of the string. To remove all occurences you should use stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString: