note 112400 deleted from function.preg-replace by crell

Note Submitter: spamthishard at wtriple dot com ---- If you want to replace only the n-th occurrence of $pattern, you can use this function: <?php function preg_replace_nth($pattern, $replacement, $subject, $nth=1) { return preg_replace_callback($pattern, function($found) use (&$pattern, &$replacement, &$nth) { $nth--; if ($nth==0) return preg_replace($pattern, $replacement, reset($found) ); return reset($found); }, $subject,$nth ); } echo preg_replace_nth("/(\w+)\|/", '${1} is the 4th|', "|aa|b|cc|dd|e|ff|gg|kkk|", 4); ?> this outputs |aa|b|cc|dd is the 4th|e|ff|gg|kkk| backreferences are accepted in $replacement