This command should work, imho:

$file = ~/personal/private/.htaccess;
find ~/ -name .htaccess -type f -exec diff $file {}
              \|\| ( echo 'Replacing: ' {} \&\& rm {} \&\& ln -s $file {} )\;

It should hunt down all the copies of my .htaccess files that are only there to password protect a directory and make them symlinks to an authoritative version.

There are many ways to accomplish the task and ⟰ is apparently not one of them. ☺