Translations:Manual:Short URL/Apache/31/en

The $RewriteRule directive may be invoked in both the $httpd file and in any $hta1 file, but when the rewrite rule appears in .htaccess files, the implicit per-directory context affects the rule's  because rules are relative to the current directory. In $hta2 files, Patterns are not relative to the complete, original URI. For $hta3 files, Patterns should never start with a forward slash, $slash1, because the URI sub-string will never begin with a $slash2. The examples that follow use the $l flag whose meaning is Stop the rewriting process immediately, and don't apply any more rules.