Apache rewrite rule which works with or without a trailing slash

Question

I'm trying to redirect a series of static URLs, and I want it to work whether or not the trailing slash is present:

/foo/bar ---> /tacos /foo/bar/ --> /tacos

I've tried the following, and all sorts of variations, but I always get a match only with the trailing slash present:

RewriteRule ^foo/bar?/$ http://url.com/tacos RewriteRule ^foo/bar(?/)$ http://url.com/tacos RewriteRule ^foo/bar*/$ http://url.com/tacos RewriteRule ^foo/bar(*/)$ http://url.com/tacos

I feel like I'm missing something obvious. Help?

Ran into the same issue. I noticed that if I had the folder existing (but empty) then both would work with "RewriteRule ^old/(.*) test.com/new/$1 [R=301,L]" logic (where test.com/old/ existed). — Xonatron
– Xonatron, Commented Jan 7, 2019 at 18:33

Community · Accepted Answer · 2019-04-25 10:20:27Z

48

Other than in EBNF or ABNF, a quantifier in regular expressions refers the preceding expression and not the following expression.

So:

RewriteRule ^foo/bar/?$ http://url.com/tacos

edited Apr 25, 2019 at 10:20

CommunityBot

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answered Oct 1, 2010 at 21:57

Gumbo

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1 Comment

bobobobo Over a year ago

The question mark says "I'll have 0 or 1 trailing slashes." You go to a restaurant and say "I'll have a taco?" You're really saying "I'll have 0 or 1 tacos."

fulv · Accepted Answer · 2011-06-04 20:32:49Z

If you want to match foo/bar regardless of whether it's followed by another portion of path, you can say:

RewriteRule ^foo/bar(/.*|$) http://url.com/tacos

This will match any of the following:

foo/bar foo/bar/ foo/bar/baz

It means: match either a) a slash followed by 0 or more characters, or b) the end of the string.

On the other hand, these might be undesirable:

RewriteRule ^foo/bar/? http://url.com/tacos # This also matches foo/barb RewriteRule ^foo/bar/?$ http://url.com/tacos # This will not match foo/bar/baz

I'd say you can omit the .* here: RewriteRule ^foo/bar(/|$) http://url.com/tacos. That only makes sense if you actually use what you capture there.

chigley · Accepted Answer · 2010-10-01 21:57:51Z

3

Try

RewriteRule ^foo/bar/?$ http://url.com/tacos

answered Oct 1, 2010 at 21:57

chigley

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Comments

CragMonkey · Accepted Answer · 2018-05-22 03:59:45Z

2

This also works: RedirectMatch 301 /foo/bar(/.*|$) http://url.com/tacos

answered May 22, 2018 at 3:59

CragMonkey

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