Question

I have a string with structure similar to: 'aba aaa cba sbd dga gad aaa cbz'. The string can be a bit different each time as it’s from an external source.

I would like to replace only first occurrence of 'aaa' but not the others. Is it possible?

Answer 1

The optional fourth parameter of preg_replace is limit:

preg_replace($search, $replace, $subject, 1);