php replace first occurrence of string from 0th position [duplicate]
Use preg_replace() with a limit of 1:
preg_replace('/nothing/', 'something', $str, 1);Replace the regular expression /nothing/ with whatever string you want to search for. Since regular expressions are always evaluated left-to-right, this will always match the first instance.
on the man page for str_replace (http://php.net/manual/en/function.str-replace.php) you can find this function
function str_replace_once($str_pattern, $str_replacement, $string){ if (strpos($string, $str_pattern) !== false){ $occurrence = strpos($string, $str_pattern); return substr_replace($string, $str_replacement, strpos($string, $str_pattern), strlen($str_pattern)); } return $string;}usage sample: http://codepad.org/JqUspMPx