VIM: Finding and replacing first N occurrences of a word

Question

I am editing a file and i want to change only a specific word with another word, but only for first N occurrences. I tried multiple commands

N :s/word/newword/

Answer 1

Using a disposable recording allows you to control exactly how many changes you do:

qq             " start recording in register q
/foo       " search for next foo
cgnbar    " change it to bar
q              " end recording
11@q           " play recording 11 times

See :help recording and :help gn.

Another way, using :normal:

:norm! /foocgnbar     <-- should look like this: :norm! /foo^Mcgnbar^[
11@:

See :help :normal and :help @:.

Or simply:

:/foo/|s//bar
11@: