Not sure I'm w/ you: you say you used '-' to separate, but you split on a space (split(" ",$sites), but: this should work (you'll want to use code and /code tags to make your code readable: see writeup formatting tips):

$sites = "one-seven-three-four-nine";
@site_list = split(/-/,$sites # array is a bad array name
foreach $site ( @site_list ) {
  # assuming you've got something more in mind
  # than print "$site\n";
  if ( $site eq "three" ) {
     print "we got a three\n";
  }
  if ( $site eq "seven" ) { 
 ....
}     # foreach $site
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a