CODEWITHSUNDEEP
regexapachemod-rewrite
evolutionxbox
evolutionxbox

Reputation: 4122

What does this regex/re-write do?

In the following code, what does the regex do?

RewriteCond   %{REQUEST_URI}       ^/(?:[A-Za-z]+(?:/[A-Za-z]*)*)(?:/\d+)?$
RewriteRule   .*                   var/www/%1/index.php [L]

What is the outcome of the re-wrtie rule?

Thanks, I am helping a friend fix an old CMS and I don't know why whomever made it did this.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 73

Answers (3)

TerryE
TerryE

Reputation: 10898

What is the outcome of the re-write rule?

AFAIK it will generate 404s when you don't expect it to. Why?

  1. The (?: something) brackets are basically the same as () except that they don't set a match variable. Since all bracketing is like this %1 will never be defined.

  2. Picking up Alexander's description /letters{/letters}([/digits]) where the /digits are optional. The repeat group is "zero or more letters" and hence will eat any / characters, and these are greedy matches, so /aa/bb/cc/123 will be parsed as (/aa)(/bb)(/cc)(/)(123). This will fail since 123 does not match (?:/\d+)?

  3. So it will only match alpha path strings, e.g. /aaa/bbb/ccc and %1 will be "" and in these circumstances this will redirect to var/www//index.php relative to the current path, which will probably be the DOCROOT, so unless DOCROOT/var/www/index.php exists, this will result in a 404.

Upvotes: 2

Alexander Pavlov
Alexander Pavlov

Reputation: 32306

It is supposed to redirect all requests of the form /letters{/letters}[/digits] to a local file var/www/SOMETHING/index.php but it does not: first, there is no capturing group (all groups have leading ?: and, consequently, it is not clear what SOMETHING will be). Next, the var/www... part should perhaps have a leading /.

Upvotes: 2

Seki
Seki

Reputation: 11465

Following the mod-rewrite help, the %1 should refer to the first capturing group of the regexp from the last RewriteCond. But the regexp only has non-capturing groups...

Upvotes: 0

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