How do I get my search to return more then one word or number in a sentences

[chuckiechan]

I am a beginner so forgive me if my code looks like a joke.

I can return a single character, but I don't know if I am using the wrong format I was trying the split method because I thought I could return several parts of a sentence for example if it had 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 I thought I could search and return
2 5 7 but it will only work if they are next to each other or an exact match I guess. I may have don it incorrectly. I couldn't make the split work.

This is the last somewhat working version I had.

look_in = raw_input ("Enter the search file to look in ")
search = raw_input ("Enter your search item ")
file = open(look_in, "r").read().count(search)
if file:   print search, ",", file,"Of your search was found"
else:   print "Your search was not found"

If anyone could help or point me in the right direction I would appreciate it.
Thanks for your time and help.

[bvdet]

Please use code tags when posting code.

You are on the right track with split. You need to loop on the list that results from the split. Here's an example: I have a file full of 5 letter words. I will skip the raw_input.

fn = "fiveLetterWords.txt"
# Do not use "file" for a variable name.
# The built-in function "file()" will be masked.
fileStr = open(fn).read().lower()
words = 'Clunk,unite,fatal,PLIES,abstemious'
for word in words.lower().split(','):
    i = fileStr.count(word)
    print ("There %s %d occurrence%s of %s in file %s" % \
           (["is", "are"][(i>1 or i==0) or 0],
            i, ["", "s"][(i>1 or i==0) or 0], word, fn))

The output:

>>> There is 1 occurrence of clunk in file fiveLetterWords.txt
There is 1 occurrence of unite in file fiveLetterWords.txt
There is 1 occurrence of fatal in file fiveLetterWords.txt
There is 1 occurrence of plies in file fiveLetterWords.txt
There are 0 occurrences of abstemious in file fiveLetterWords.txt
>>> 

Please ask if you have any questions about the code I posted.