How to replace more than two repeated characters in a row using regular expressions?

Question

Design

For example, there is a number "12225422642". It is necessary that only the first three deuces be replaced by one deuce.

Answer 1

preg_replace('/(.)\1{2,}/', '\1', $str)

Answer 2

if for some reason you don't want to learn regular expressions, then what prevents you from using the while loop (strpos($str, '222') !== false) ?

Answer 3

DERBIAGLOBALISTO

$str = '1222542264222';

$str = preg_replace('~(2)\1{2,}~', '$1', $str);

echo $str;