补充一下人们所说的，记住整个字符串是一个数组:

$string = "Lorem ipsum lá lá lá";

$string[0] = "B";

echo $string;

“Borem ipsum there there”

为了扩展zombat的答案(我认为这是最好的答案)，我创建了他的函数的递归版本，该函数接受$limit参数来指定要替换的次数。

function str_replace_limit($haystack, $needle, $replace, $limit, $start_pos = 0) {
    if ($limit <= 0) {
        return $haystack;
    } else {
        $pos = strpos($haystack,$needle,$start_pos);
        if ($pos !== false) {
            $newstring = substr_replace($haystack, $replace, $pos, strlen($needle));
            return str_replace_limit($newstring, $needle, $replace, $limit-1, $pos+strlen($replace));
        } else {
            return $haystack;
        }
    }
}

最简单的方法是使用正则表达式。

另一种方法是用strpos()找到字符串的位置，然后用substr_replace()

但我真的会选择RegExp。

对于字符串

$string = 'OOO.OOO.OOO.S';
$search = 'OOO';
$replace = 'B';

//replace ONLY FIRST occurance of "OOO" with "B"
    $string = substr_replace($string,$replace,0,strlen($search));
    //$string => B.OOO.OOO.S

//replace ONLY LAST occurance of "OOOO" with "B"
    $string = substr_replace($string,$replace,strrpos($string,$search),strlen($search)) 
    //$string => OOO.OOO.B.S

    //replace ONLY LAST occurance of "OOOO" with "B"
    $string = strrev(implode(strrev($replace),explode(strrev($search),strrev($string),2)))
    //$string => OOO.OOO.B.S

对于单个字符

$string[strpos($string,$search)] = $replace;


//EXAMPLE

$string = 'O.O.O.O.S';
$search = 'O';
$replace = 'B';

//replace ONLY FIRST occurance of "O" with "B" 
    $string[strpos($string,$search)] = $replace;  
    //$string => B.O.O.O.S

//replace ONLY LAST occurance of "O" with "B" 
    $string[strrpos($string,$search)] = $replace; 
    // $string => B.O.O.B.S

不幸的是，我不知道任何PHP函数可以做到这一点。 你可以像这样很容易地自己卷:

function replace_first($find, $replace, $subject) {
    // stolen from the comments at PHP.net/str_replace
    // Splits $subject into an array of 2 items by $find,
    // and then joins the array with $replace
    return implode($replace, explode($find, $subject, 2));
}

可以用preg_replace完成:

function str_replace_first($search, $replace, $subject)
{
    $search = '/'.preg_quote($search, '/').'/';
    return preg_replace($search, $replace, $subject, 1);
}

echo str_replace_first('abc', '123', 'abcdef abcdef abcdef'); 
// outputs '123def abcdef abcdef'

神奇之处在于可选的第四个参数[Limit]。从文档中可以看到:

[极限]-最大可能 每个中的每个模式的替换 主题字符串。默认为-1 (no 限制)。

不过，请参阅zombat的回答以获得更有效的方法(大约快3-4倍)。