list to array help

Hi all, I have a search where I search inside a document and count how many times I found a given word. My problem is that I have a list e.g. $list_path this is a string of where the file is location on the server what I need help on this getting this list into array format of /somepath/doc1.doc would be $array[0] then /somepath/ doc2.doc would be $array[1] and so on. Then I can use array_count_values for how many times in appears. If I my going off can someone point me in the right way? Thank You Ben