mod_rewrite question

[Smylers]

David Cantrell writes:

> mod_rewrite is, as is its wont, annoying me again.  More specifically,
> its shitty documentation is annoying me.  Because despite careful study,
> I can't figure out how to persuade it that both
> 
>   /foo
>   /?.=foo
> 
> should map to
> 
>   /index.pl?.=foo

First, if a request doesn't have a query string then grab the path and
set that as the . parameter in the query string:

  RewriteEngine on

  RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^$
  RewriteRule ^/(.*) /?.=$1

Then if a request doesn't have a path, use index.pl:

  RewriteRule ^/$ /index.pl

I haven't tried out the above.  If it doesn't work then please post back
here, preferably with your Apache version and some RewriteLog output,
and I'll try to work out what I got wrong.

Note that the above will cause havoc if you have anything else (images,
CSS, whatever) being served from this URL; that can be fixed by
restricting what the (.*) matches.

Also have you tried DirectoryIndex for specifying index.pl?  If that
works it reduces the amount of mod_rewrite you need.

Good luck!

Smylers