mod_rewrite chain flag

[kefeso]

Just wondering how many following statements does the chain flag chain up to. Is it just the one immediately right after? And if I want to chain more, I just append the same flag to the end of the second rule?

Thanks.

[kefeso]

@kefeso

Just wondering how many following statements does the chain flag chain up to. Is it just the one immediately right after? And if I want to chain more, I just append the same flag to the end of the second rule?

Thanks.

EDIT: Also using the same space, I want to ask a question about the N flag as well. Does it restart all the rules from the start of the htaccess file or does it only redo the rule which the flag is applied to?

[dklynn]

kefeso,

@""http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_rewrite.html"

‘chain|C’ (chained with next rule)
This flag chains the current rule with the next rule (which itself can be chained with the following rule, and so on). This has the following effect: if a rule matches, then processing continues as usual - the flag has no effect. If the rule does not match, then all following chained rules are skipped. For instance, it can be used to remove the .www'' part, inside a per-directory rule set, when you let an external redirect happen (where the .www’’ part should not occur!).

‘next|N’ (next round)
Re-run the rewriting process (starting again with the first rewriting rule). This time, the URL to match is no longer the original URL, but rather the URL returned by the last rewriting rule. This corresponds to the Perl next command or the continue command in C. Use this flag to restart the rewriting process - to immediately go to the top of the loop. Be careful not to create an infinite loop!

[QUOTE=kefeso"]
Just wondering how many following statements does the chain flag chain up to. Is it just the one immediately right after? And if I want to chain more, I just append the same flag to the end of the second rule?
[/quote]

That would be as many statements as are chained.

Of interest to you SHOULD be the Skip command as it is also “block” directive (acting as a GoTo directive to … skip … a specified number of RewriteRule (block statements):

‘skip|S=num’ (skip next rule(s))
This flag forces the rewriting engine to skip the next num rules in sequence, if the current rule matches. Use this to make pseudo if-then-else constructs: The last rule of the then-clause becomes skip=N, where N is the number of rules in the else-clause. (This is not the same as the ‘chain|C’ flag!)

@kefeso

Also using the same space, I want to ask a question about the N flag as well. Does it restart all the rules from the start of the htaccess file or does it only redo the rule which the flag is applied to?

ALL! That’s is the NORMAL operation of mod_rewrite except that you are forcing the IMMEDIATE restart rather than continuing through the remaining rewrite statements before the restart.

Regards,

DK