Q:

How do I perform a recursive directory search for strings within files in a UNIX TRU64 environment?

Unfortunately, due to the limitations of our Unix Tru64 environment, I am unable to use the GREP -r switch to perform my search for strings within files across multiple directories and sub directories.
Ideally, I would like to pass two parameters.  The first will be the directory I want my search is to start on.  The second is a file containing a list of all the strings to be searched.  This list will consist of various directory path names and will include special characters:
ie:
/aaa/bbb/ccc
/eee/dddd/ggggggg/
etc..
The purpose of this exercise is to identify all shell scripts that may have specific hard coded path names identified in my list.
There was one example I found during my investigations that perhaps comes close, but I am not sure how to customize this to accept a file of string arguments:
eg:  find etb -exec grep test {} \;
where 'etb' is the directory and 'test', a hard coded string to be searched.

A:

This should do it:
find dir -type f -exec grep -F -f strings.txt {} \;
dir is the directory from which searching will commence
strings.txt is the file of strings to match, one per line
-F means treat search strings as literal rather than regular expressions
-f strings.txt means use the strings in strings.txt for matching
You can add -l to the grep switches if you just want filenames that match.
Footnote:
Some people prefer a solution involving xargs, e.g. 
find dir -type f -print0 | xargs -0 grep -F -f strings.txt
which is perhaps a little more robust/efficient in some cases.

