htaccess question - HTML Forums

eventide · 08-28-2009, 04:59 PM

I'm helping someone with his web site and I ran across this code in the htaccess file in his root folder:

Code:

RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)$ $1 [NC]

Can someone explain exactly what the heck this is supposed to be doing? What is "SCRIPT_FILENAME"? (I know it's a server variable, but WHAT is it? I know that !-d and !-f mean not a directory/file. But what does it mean how it's used here?

The rewrite rule is pretty much totally foriegn to me. I know that regex notation is used, but the second carat confuses me and I know the $1 refers to something from the condition, but since I don't understand the condition, then I'm not sure what should/would be there.

Obvioulsy I'm lost on this...
HELP!!!

darksidepuffin · 08-28-2009, 08:52 PM

This seems a bit of an odd rule to me, but, to address your questions:

If I'm not mistaken, it's trying to check SCRIPT_FILENAME (the path to the current executing file) to see if it's a directory or a file, and if not, match the filename if it doesn't contain a dot, and redirect to the filename. In other words...it's an infinite loop, or seems to be.

Request: /file_does_not_exist -> rewrite to file_does_not_exist
Request: /file_does_not_exist_with_extension_or_contains_a_.dot -> do nothing
Request: /file_exists -> do nothing
Request: /this_is_a_directory -> do nothing

eventide · 08-29-2009, 02:40 PM

I.e. it's okay to get rid of it...

Well, I commented it out anyway!

Thanks, darkside