g1smd - 4:13 pm on Jun 6, 2010 (gmt 0)

That's not possible.

The full URL is contained in the request sent by the browser and appears in the URL bar of the browser at the point the browser makes that URL request to the server.

The browser must request both a domain name and a filepath and/or filename in order for the server to know exactly what content to return for that request.

It is possible for the displayed and requested URL to be example.com/short and for an internal rewrite to connect that request to a /much-longer-path/and-file-name.php inside the server.