Simple rewrite rule stopped working on HostGator

[parorrey]

Hi,

this simple

^(portfolio/clients/[a-z-0-9]+)/$

rule has stopped working and showing 500 Internal Server Error on HostGator Server. Its working fine on other servers though.

Can somebody help?

[parorrey]

following is the comeplte error message in error log.

/public_html/.htaccess: RewriteRule: cannot compile regular expression '^(portfolio/clients/[a-z-0-9]+)/$'\n

any ideas what's causing this?

[jdMorgan]

Probably a change in the regular-expressions library of the server operating system -- due to an OS change or upgrade.

The hyphen plays two roles within character alternation [groups]. It can represent either a literal hyphen or a "range indicator" (as in "a-z"). The interpretation of the hyphen, if ambiguous, can vary among regular-expressions processing libraries. So, it's best to avoid ambiguity, and where it might exist, to escape the hyphen so as to disambiguate it:

If you wish to match hyphens in your pattern:

^(portfolio/clients/[a-z0-[b]9\-][/b]+)/$

If you wish to match only letters and numbers:

^(portfolio/clients/[a-z0-9]+)/$

Jim

[parorrey]

Thank you Jim. escaping the - did the trick.