Question

I have a webpage which uses PHP and I am using mod_rewrite to make simpler URLs like

RewriteRule ^login$ /php/pages/login.php [L]

What I want to do is to prevent the direct access to the directory /php. But if I use something like:

RewriteRule ^php - [R=404,L,NC]

at the end of the file even the rewritten URLs are prevent since the .htaccess is used in the subdirectory again with the rewritten URL. If possible I would not like to place another .htaccess to each directory.
I also tried RewriteCond with REQUEST_URI without any luck.

Answer 1

at the end of the .htaccess:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^/php/    
RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} ^$
RewriteRule . - [R=404,L]