sed replace last line matching pattern

Question

Given a file like this:

a
b
a
b

I\'d like to be able to use sed to replace just the last line that contains an instance of \"a

Answer 1

Here is all done in one single awk

awk 'FNR==NR {if ($0~/a/) f=NR;next} FNR==f {$0="c"} 1' file file
a
b
c
b

This reads the file twice. First run to find last a, second run to change it.