replace all occurrences after nth occurrence php? - php

Question

I have this string...
$text = "1|2|1400|34|A|309|Frank|william|This|is|the|line|here|"
How do I replace all the occurrences of | with " " after the 8th occurrence of | from the beginning of the string?
I need it look like this, 1|2|1400|34|A|309|Frank|william|This is the line here
$find = "|";
$replace = " ";
I tried
$text = preg_replace(strrev("/$find/"),strrev($replace),strrev($text),8);
but its not working out so well. If you have an idea please help!

Answer 1

You can use:
$text = '1|2|1400|34|A|309|Frank|william|This|is|the|line|here|';
$repl = preg_replace('/^([^|]*\|){8}(*SKIP)(*F)|\|/', ' ', $text);
//=> 1|2|1400|34|A|309|Frank|william|This is the line here
RegEx Demo
Approach is to match and ignore first 8 occurrences of | using ^([^|]*\|){8}(*SKIP)(*F) and the replace each | by space.

Answer 2

You can use explode()
$text = "1|2|1400|34|A|309|Frank|william|This|is|the|line|here|";
$arr = explode('|', $text);
$result = '';
foreach($arr as $k=>$v){
if($k == 0) $result .= $v;
else $result .= ($k > 7) ? ' '.$v : '|'.$v;
}
echo $result;

Answer 3

You could use the below regex also and replace the matched | with a single space.
$text = '1|2|1400|34|A|309|Frank|william|This|is|the|line|here|';
$repl = preg_replace('~(?:^(?:[^|]*\|){8}|(?<!^)\G)[^|\n]*\K\|~', ' ', $text);
DEMO

Answer 4

<?php
$text = "1|2|1400|34|A|309|Frank|william|This|is|the|line|here|";
$texts = explode( "|", $text );
$new_text = '';
$total_words = count( $texts );
for ( $i = 0; $i < $total_words; $i++)
{
$new_text .= $texts[$i];
if ( $i <= 7 )
$new_text .= "|";
else
$new_text .= " ";
}
echo $new_text;
?>

Answer 5

The way to do that is:
$text = "1|2|1400|34|A|309|Frank|william|This|is|the|line|here|";
$arr = explode('|', $text, 9);
$arr[8] = strtr($arr[8], array('|'=>' '));
$result = implode('|', $arr);
echo $result;

Answer 6

Example without regex:
$text = "1|2|1400|34|A|309|Frank|william|This|is|the|line|here|";
$array = str_replace( '|', ' ', explode( '|', $text, 9 ) );
$text = implode( '|', $array );
str_replace:
If subject is an array, then the search and replace is performed with
every entry of subject, and the return value is an array as well.
explode:
If limit is set and positive, the returned array will contain a
maximum of limit elements with the last element containing the rest of
string.