Redirecting double-slash ("//") URLs to single-slash ("/") URLs

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Guy Macon - 03 Jul 2008 23:42 GMT

As a personal learning experience with limited practical use,
I have been doing some experiments with using .htaccess to
redirect mis-typed URLs to a preferred canonical form. I have
set up a test page at [ http://www.guymacon.org/test.html ]
to show the results of my testing.

Most of the URLs redirect as I want them to do, but the three
URLS (with "//" instead of "/") in bold do not redirect.

I have searched the web and have not found a single website
that redirects *all* "//" URLs to "/" URLs.

Given the rarity of this error, a solution that causes a 404
error rather than a 301 redirect would be fine with me, but I
haven't seen any websites that manage that one either.

Any suggestions for things to try would be most welcome.
Thanks!

[ http://www.guymacon.org/test.html ]

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Guy Macon
<http://www.GuyMacon.com/>

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Steve - 04 Jul 2008 02:13 GMT

> As a personal learning experience with limited practical use,
> I have been doing some experiments with using .htaccess to
[quoted text clipped - 16 lines]
>
> [ http://www.guymacon.org/test.html ]

Haven't tested but this guy's approach looks good on paper if you have
access to PHP (probably easy enough to replicate in any server-side
language):

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.internet.search-engines/msg/9a0f7baad24c74dc

Dunno. It's a nearly 3-year old thread you were actually involved in,
so perhaps it doesn't work.

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Steve - 04 Jul 2008 02:14 GMT

> Dunno. It's a nearly 3-year old thread you were actually involved in,
> so perhaps it doesn't work.

... and by that, I mean perhaps you already tried it. Just re-read and
that sentence came off as an insult, which wasn't my intent.

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Guy Macon - 04 Jul 2008 10:23 GMT

>Haven't tested but this guy's approach looks good on paper if you have
>access to PHP (probably easy enough to replicate in any server-side
>language):
>
>http://groups.google.com/group/alt.internet.search-engines/msg/9a0f7baad24c74dc

Thanks!

I put it in my .htaccess -- you can see the results by clicking on
the three bold URLs at [ http://www.guymacon.org/test.html ].

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Guy Macon
<http://www.GuyMacon.com/>

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Guy Macon - 06 Jul 2008 09:38 GMT

>>Haven't tested but this guy's approach looks good on paper if you have
>>access to PHP (probably easy enough to replicate in any server-side
[quoted text clipped - 6 lines]
>I put it in my .htaccess -- you can see the results by clicking on
>the three bold URLs at [ http://www.guymacon.org/test.html ].

I am now removing it again. The result was, as I expected, that
It did not handle the test cases in bold at
[ http://www.guymacon.org/test.html ].
As far as I can tell, no website anywhere is able to handle all
of those test cases using .htaccess -- I am convinced that Apache
converts some "//"s to "/"s prior to feeding user request to
mod_rewrite.

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Guy Macon
<http://www.GuyMacon.com/>

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Webmaster Forum / HTML, CSS, Scripts / HTML / July 2008

Redirecting double-slash ("//") URLs to single-slash ("/") URLs