How to find the 3rd occurrence of a pattern on a line

Question

Today I had to align a table at only the first multiple spaces on a line.

p.e.

    move window     three lines     down  
<         


        

Answer 1

The regex would be:

/\(.\{-}\zsPATTERN\)\{3}

So if, for example, you want to change the 3rd 'foo' to 'bar' on the following line:

lorem ifoopsum foo lor foor ipsum foo dolor foo
       ^1      ^2      ^3         ^4        ^5

run:

s/\(.\{-}\zsfoo\)\{3}/bar/

to get:

lorem ifoopsum foo lor barr ipsum foo dolor foo
       ^1      ^2      ^3=bar     ^4        ^5