I have file "A" containing keywords as sequential records. For each key word in file "A",
1. need to find the files hat contained the keyword in a given directory
2. Find the file name that contained the first occurance of the keyword
3. Print the record that contatined the first occurance of the keyword

I could do this through in-line awk script
if [ $MyTest = 1 ]
then
{ while read str; do
string=$str
let ctr=ctr+1

awk '/'"$string"'/ {print;exit}' /mydir/* >> $outfile

done } < $file

However, this gives error " parameter too long" error if the there are several files. One suggestion was to run the script from separate file
1. Can some one suggest how the above can be put into separate file?
2. Also is it "awk" limitation that I am getting the error "parameter too long" when running from in-line?
Thanks

awk '/'"$string"'/ {print;exit}' /mydir/* >> $outfile

cd /mydir
ls -1 | xargs awk '/'"$string"'/ {print;exit}' >>$outfile
cd -