regex problem with helicon ape on windows server 2008

Question

I have the following rewrite rules:

RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9]*)/([a-zA-Z0-9]*)\\.php\?(.*)  /$2.php?shop=$1&$3 [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9]*)/([a-zA-Z0-9]*)\\.php        /$2.php?shop=$1 [NC,L] 
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9]*)/$  /index.php?shop=$1 [L,NC] 
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9]*)$   /index.php?shop=$1 [L,NC] 

The result of which should redirect the following:

www.site.com/Sells 
    -> /index.php?shop=Sells [works] 

www.site.com/Sells/menu.php?Cat=1 
    -> /menu.php?shop=Sells&Cat=1 [failing] 
    -> /menu.php?shop=Sells [which is 'wrong'] 

The last example should get matched by rewrite [1]...

I have tested the rules with the regex tester shipped with ape and found that escaping ? and . don't seem to work. I am a little flummoxed and would appreciate anyone who could shed some light on why this escaping is not working.

Loads of thanks in advance.

Answer 1

QSA flag was missing! it appends the query string and I forgot to put it in!!!

The double slashes I added as preview was not showing the single ones!

Answer 2

RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9]*)/([a-zA-Z0-9]*)\\.php\?(.*)  /$2.php?shop=$1&$3 [NC,L]
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9]*)/([a-zA-Z0-9]*)\\.php        /$2.php?shop=$1 [NC,L] 

Too much escaping. Change \\.php to \.php.

Answer 3

You seem to escape the \ that is meant to escape the . (you have \. which is read as \ and any letter/symbol)