Abstract: A system and method for searching a text file for the occurrence of user-selected text portions that satisfy user-specified conditions. The user-specified conditions are in the form of logical operator terms that interrelate user-selected word terms. The system uses a full text index describing the location of all word terms within a text file. The system accepts the user-selected word terms and the user-specified conditions and constructs an n-ary search tree where terminal nodes represent the user-selected text portions and the non-terminal nodes represent logical operator terms that interrelate the word terms. The system uses the full text index to construct index lists for each of the word terms and has an index pointer for each of the index lists. A Boolean evaluator analyzes each of the non-terminal nodes to determine if word terms represented by adjacent terminal nodes satisfies the logical operation term represented by the non-terminal nodes.