str_replace puzzle #2

[marain]

<?php
$lastUpdate = date( 'j F Y', filemtime( 'pageContent/reviewActivity.txt' ) );

$months = array (
"January",
"February",
"March",
"April",
"May",
"June",
"July",
"August",
"September",
"October",
"November",
"December",
);

echo "<br /><br /><br /><br />";
$serverMonth = date ('m');
$serverMonth--;
$bigData = file_get_contents ($months[$serverMonth] . "Collection");        
$bigData = str_replace (" ", "", $bigData);
echo "Here comes \$bigData:<br /><br />" . $bigData . "<br /><br />";
$lineItem = explode ("*", $bigData);
foreach ($lineItem as $item) {
    echo "Item = " . $item . "<br />";
}
?>
<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.marainlaw.com/bottomline.php"><img border="2" src="images/marain-logo.gif" alt="" width="130" height="75" class="right" /></a>
<br />
<br />

Folks,

The code above is for https://www.marainlaw.com/page.php?here=reviewActivity. It appears that line breaks cause omission of "Item =" on the line that follows. Can someone explain why?

[marain]

Resolution was to eliminate the line breaks inserted in the script that created the file. I have no opinion as to whether the line breaks "should" have caused what I discerned originally to be a problem.