Question

I am looking for a way to remove incoming links that contain file extensions, such as .htm, .html, and .php and to send a 302 response so that the referrer knows to update their links.

For example, http://www.acmeinc.com/projects.html would redirect to http://www.acmeinc.com/projects and send a 302 response.

Answer 1

Something like this should do the magic:

RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)\. $1 [R=302,L]

This rule is only valid for http://www.acmeinc.com/projects.html and not for http://www.acmeinc.com/projects.seconddot.html.
If you’d like to rewrite only certain extensions, use this rule.

RewriteRule ^([^\.]+)\.(html|php|js|foobar) $1 [R=302,L]