How to fix a spelling mistake in lots of files

First, is it all version controlled? 
And are any of the files currently in editor buffers? Close if so.

There are two different versions of rename

the perl-rename that I was expecting

$ rename 's/monkey/reproducer/g' *monkey*

and the rename from util-linux 2.28.2 that's actually on my Fedora box

$ rename monkey reproducer *monkey*

need to do this in all affected directories, there's probably something you can do with find if there are lots

and then to change the text in all the files (recursive)

$ grep -rl monkey . | xargs sed -i 's/monkey/reproducer/g' 

finally change it in .bash_history too

sed -i 's/monkey/reproducer/g' ~/.bash_history

note that this will corrupt the history of all the commands you just typed.

rsync and explainshell

My current favourite rsync invocation is:

$ DIR=/home/jla/stuff

$ rsync -Phavz --stats remote:$DIR/  $DIR

and my current favourite way of figuring out what the options mean is:

http://explainshell.com/explain?cmd=rsync+-Phavz+--stats

http://explainshell.com/explain?cmd=rsync+-Phavz+--stats+remote%3A%24DIR%2F+%24DIR

Although it doesn't mention the crucial trailing slash on the source directory, which means that you end up copying /home/jla/stuff/file to /home/jla/stuff/file rather than to /home/jla/stuff/stuff/file.