Question

I’m looking for a modified version of str_ireplace (case-insensitive) that would replace ONLY ONCE.

I read online it’s doable with preg or other techniques but I’m looking for a generic function I can re-use.

Bonus: the use will be to add a link anchor tag around the word, so it would be nice if it could somehow keep the capitalization of the original word.

Answer 1

It sounds like you definitely want preg_replace(). If you would like you can create a user defined function:

function put_in_link($str)
{
    return preg_replace('/(linkText)/i', '<a href="/linkHref">$1</a>', $str, 1);
}

but there is kind of no reason to do this rather than preg_replace(). This call is really no more complex than a str_ireplace() call.

The last parameter was added for limiting to 1 occurrence.