Using str_replace so that it only acts on the first match?

Question

I want a version of str_replace() that only replaces the first occurrence of $search in the $subject. Is there an easy solution to thi

Answer 1

To expand on zombat's answer (which I believe to be the best answer), I created a recursive version of his function that takes in a $limit parameter to specify how many occurrences you want to replace.

function str_replace_limit($haystack, $needle, $replace, $limit, $start_pos = 0) {
    if ($limit <= 0) {
        return $haystack;
    } else {
        $pos = strpos($haystack,$needle,$start_pos);
        if ($pos !== false) {
            $newstring = substr_replace($haystack, $replace, $pos, strlen($needle));
            return str_replace_limit($newstring, $needle, $replace, $limit-1, $pos+strlen($replace));
        } else {
            return $haystack;
        }
    }
}