problem comparing Strings using compareTo() as it never evaluates to 0 even when the two strings are equal

I'm storing a list of English words provided in txt format, where each word is separated by a line , to a List < string > with the following code

  public TextAsset text;
  List<string> words = new List<string>();
    
 
     
     void Start () {
         words = (text.text.Split("\n"[0])).ToList<string>();
     }
     

and then using binary search on the List and string.compareTo() I'm trying to find weather a specific word exists or not

  public bool binarySearch(string word) {
         
        
         
         int min = 0;
         int max = words.Count;
         int mid = (min + max) / 2;
         int value = word.CompareTo(words[mid]);
        
         while (min<=max){
             
             if (value == 0) {
                 return true;
             }
             else if (value > 0)
             {
                 min = mid + 1;
                 mid = (min + max) / 2;
             }
             else
             {
                 max = mid - 1;
                 mid = (min + max) / 2;
             }
             value = word.CompareTo(words[mid]);
             
             
         }
              return false;

but I'm running into a problem where I am able to locate the correct index of the matching word but for some reason, which I think is how the strings are stored into the List, the compareTo() never returns 0, can somebody figure out what is going on?