Sed recursively with the help of ack and xargs

This is brilliant! I made it into a little script called srchrep

#!/bin/sh
replace=$1
replacement=$2
ack "$replace" -la --print0 | xargs -0 -n 1 sed -i "s/$replace/$replacement/"

or as a function for your .bashrc or .bashprofile

function srchrpc () { ack "$1" -la --print0 | xargs -0 -n 1 sed -i "s/$1/$2/"; }

• note I added the -a flag so that it will do the replace on all files. So, if this isn't the behaviour you are looking for, you want take care with this .
• just save the script version as whatever you feel comfortable with then, make a symlink or put it in ~/bin and then you can call it like

$ srchrep searchText replacementText 

• any insight is welcome and appreciated.