str replace - but just once

[internetheaven]

Seen a lot of lengthy code to replace only one instance in string e.g.

function str_replace_once($needle , $replace , $haystack){
// Looks for the first occurence of $needle in $haystack
// and replaces it with $replace.
$pos = strpos($haystack, $needle);
if ($pos === false) {
// Nothing found
return $haystack;
}
return substr_replace($haystack, $replace, $pos, strlen($needle));
}

any short versions? I have:

$show = str_replace('term','replacement',$string);

and read somewhere that there was a value you could enter to reduce the number of replacements to one i.e.

$show = str_replace('term','replacement',$string, 1);

[rob7591]

The last line of code you tried is correct.
[us2.php.net...]

[d40sithui]

Yep last line should do it, but only if you're running PHP 5 since the $count parameter was added after version 5.

[internetheaven]

I am running PHP 5 (5.2.9) and that line doesn't work though?

[coopster]

The

count

argument is not a limit but count of the number of times the needle was found and replaced. To use a limit go with preg_replace [php.net].

[internetheaven]

Thanks, but I'm not getting that working either. I tried:

$show = preg_replace('term','replacement',$string, 1);

and

$show = str_replace('term','replacement',$string[, 1]);

and neither of those two work.

[coopster]

preg_replace requires a regular expression pattern as it's first argument and it must be in the proper syntax [php.net], meaning the expression must be enclosed in the delimiters.

print preg_replace("/ll/", "", "good golly miss molly!", 1); 
// good goy miss molly!

[internetheaven]

Of course it does! That's it, I'm going to bed ... ;)

Thanks everyone for your patience!