replace only the first occurence of a character

If I have a string like "abcd&123&efgh&456", what function in PHP should I use to replace only the first occurence of '&' with some other character say '?'. The resultant string I need is "abcd123&efgh&456"

this works ... but I am positive there is an easier/better way ...but it escapes me ATM

$str='s?d1fg&sdsdf&fg&';
$str{strpos($str, '&')}='?';
echo $str;

Thanks my friend..ofcourse it works..but how does it work exactly. strpos() finds the position of first "&" and then it gets replaced with "?". I didn't get the logic of what is happening after getting the postion of first occurence of '&' character.

Hi, you can access part of a string (which in PHP is scalar) as if it were an array, so ...

$str='blah';
echo $str{1}; //echo's 'l'
#or
echo $str[0]; //echo's 'b'


so we simply act on the string as if it were an array and change $str[$index] to something else, this does not however work if you want to remove a portion of the string.. $str[$index]=''; , does not actually work (at least not for me on linux)

I cant remember the name of this way of accessing a string and I think the {} method might be depracated ... or is it the [] method ?

$str='s?d1fg&sdsdf&fg&';
$str{strpos($str, '&')}='?';
echo $str; is equivalent to
$str='s?d1fg&sdsdf&fg&';
$pos=strpos($str, '&');
$str{$pos}='?'; #=> $str[$pos]='?'; // I'm seeing this curly brace syntax for the first time!
echo $str;

[] OR {} - http://www.codingforums.com/showthread.php?t=93902 :)

I cant remember the name of this way of accessing a string and I think the {} method might be depracated ... or is it the [] method ?

ok..anyways both method works fine.
So should I use {} or []..if it's treated as an array the I think we should go for []..what do u feel?

ok, from the php strings page (http://php.net/manual/en/language.types.string.php)


Characters within strings may be accessed and modified by specifying the zero-based offset of the desired character after the string using square array brackets, as in $str[42]. Think of a string as an array of characters for this purpose. The functions substr() and substr_replace() can be used when you want to extract or replace more than 1 character.

Note: Strings may also be accessed using braces, as in $str{42}, for the same purpose.


so looks like either is good, whichever you prefer, I think curly braces as then you are less likely to confuse it with an array ??

// I'm seeing this curly brace syntax for the first time!


[] OR {} - http://www.codingforums.com/showthread.php?t=93902 :)

I am also seeing the use of {} like this now..Is it a safe method? Are there any other alternative methods for finding and replacing first occurence of a string.