What's the "^" in RewriteRule Statements?

Question

I keep seeing the ^ character in RewriteRule statements in a context that doesn't fit with the usage specified in this document about regular expressions.

For example: RewriteRule ^(.*)$ $1.php [L,QSA]

What does it signify?

Useful: mod_rewrite Cheat Sheet by DaveChild at addedbytes.com/cheat-sheets/mod_rewrite-cheat-sheet — Anthony Hatzopoulos, Jul 26, 2012 at 13:49
The usage in the linked document is the same with mod_rewrite (the RewriteRule pattern). However, regex in Apache config files don't use delimiters. — MrWhite, Oct 31, 2015 at 23:03

MrWhite · Accepted Answer · 2015-10-31 22:57:54Z

8

It means "this matches the start of the string". So in your example the rule does the rewrite if there's

In other words, this whole expression matches any string.

MrWhite

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answered Aug 31, 2011 at 8:31

paulmorriss

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Ah, of course. I always forget about the begin and end anchors.
– Maxpm
Aug 31, 2011 at 8:32
2

.* means 0 or more characters, so a zero length string matches too.
– pritaeas
Aug 31, 2011 at 8:59
Thanks @pritaeas for the update. I was doing it from memory.
– paulmorriss
Aug 31, 2011 at 9:02

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