.htaccess - if not exist, rewrite to index.php but send 404 instead of 200

Question

I have a catchall .htaccess directive like this:

RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php [L]

Anything that doesn't exist and the url is rewritten back to the index page. This is fine, however I want the header to be sent a 404 instead of a 200. How would I do this?

Answer 1

I think the only way to do so is using ErrorDocument directive:

ErrorDocument 404 index.php

because with RewriteRule you are "masking" the error serving another page to the request.

Yet you must know that ErrorDocument 404 won't change the url of the page, thus you will have your homepage on a wrong url.