Newbie: searching a list

[user]

I have a list generated from a "sentence=split(some_file.readline())"
statement.

A sample list resulting from this statement is:
    ['Independent', 'Variable', '=', '11', ';']

I want to extract the '11', which is the next item in the list following
the equals sign; I thought to get it this way:

found=0
IV=''
for item in sentence:
    if found:
        IV=item
        break
    if item == "=":
        found=1

This works, but is it the best way to do it?

-- Stephen