Question

I am just curious, how is feature of apache is called that is directing requests like this

www.example.com/index.php/my/path/here

to a file index.php? At the first moment, you might think, that it would be correct if this request leads to 404 error page because there is no folder called index.php at the site root dir.

BTW, is there a possibility to turn off this Apache feature (if it is a feature) so that such requests really end up with 404?

Answer 1

This isn’t a URL rewrite feature. Or at least it doesn’t need to be. See AcceptPathInfo Directive:

This directive controls whether
requests that contain trailing
pathname information that follows an
actual filename (or non-existent file
in an existing directory) will be
accepted or rejected. The trailing
pathname information can be made
available to scripts in the
PATH_INFO environment variable.

For example, assume the location
/test/ points to a directory that
contains only the single file
here.html. Then requests for
/test/here.html/more and
/test/nothere.html/more both collect
/more as PATH_INFO.

It was originally a CGI environment variable.

• PATH_INFO

The extra path information, as given
by the client. In other words, scripts
can be accessed by their virtual
pathname, followed by extra
information at the end of this path.
The extra information is sent as
PATH_INFO. This information should
be decoded by the server if it comes
from a URL before it is passed to the
CGI script.