How to replace a variable within a string with PHP?

So I have some PHP code that looks like:

$message = 'Here is the result: %s';

I just used %s as an example. It's basically a placeholder for whatever will go there. Then I pass the string to a function and I want that function to replace the %s with the value.

What do I need to do to achieve this? Do I need to do some regex, and use preg_replace(), or something? or is there a simpler way to do it?

From stackoverflow

• try dynamic variables:

  $placeholder = 's';
  str_replace("%".$placeholder,$$placeholder,$message);
  

  then %s will be replaced with $s, the variable

• You can use str_replace

  http://es.php.net/manual/en/function.str-replace.php

  that is for sure lighter than regex.

  Also sprintf can be an even more versatile option

  http://es.php.net/manual/en/function.sprintf.php

• You can use sprintf, which works in a very similar way to C's printf and sprintf functions.

• You can actually use sprintf function which will return a formatted string and will put your variables on the place of the placeholders.
  It also gives you great powers over how you want your string to be formated and displayed

  $output = sprintf("Here is the result: %s for this date %s", $result, $date);
  

• If you use %s, I think that is the same placeholder that printf uses for a string. So you could do:

  $text = sprintf($message, "replacement text");
  

  Think that should work at least...

• 
  $find = array(
       '#name#',
       '#date#'
  );
  $find = array(
       'someone\'s name',
       date("m-d-Y")
  );
  $text_result = str_replace($find, $search, $text);
  

  I'm usually using this for my code, fetching the $text from some text/html files then make the $text_result as the output