This code will open a file and count the words. Note, this is mostly just psuedo-code. It is not complete and has not been tested.

CountWords.py

f=open('/tmp/file.dat')
words = {}
for line in f:
  print line
  line_words = line.split() // returns an array of words separated by whitespace
  for word in line_words:
    // get the value
    val = words.get(word, false)
    if val:
      val++;
      words[word] = val