UNIX ack

ACK is a 99% replacement for the grep and find combination. But not all commands are as obvious unfortunately.

Predefined types

 ack --php wfHook

Searches through all the php-files for the occurence of the text 'wfHook'.

txt files

ack UserName --type=text WikiTrace*.txt 

Searches the txt files WikiTrace.txt for the occurence of Username.

Codeses

Use -f for working with big codesets
Ack does more than search files. ack -f --perl will create a list of all the Perl files in a tree, ideal for sending into xargs. For example:

    # Change all "this" to "that" in all Perl files in a tree.
    ack -f --perl | xargs perl -p -i -e's/this/that/g'