Really struggling with strange rewrite

[norristudor]

I have some links to my site which are

http://mysite.com/%20

These are generating 404s

I want to redirect them to the root (or any valid page) and return a 200 code.

The problem is every rule I try doesn't work and I think its because apache sees the URL as a space.

This is what I've tried:

RewriteRule ^(%25*20) /newurl

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^\%2520
RewriteRule ^/%2520 /newurl

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^\%2520
RewriteRule ^/%2520 /newurl

Can anyone help with this one?

[g1smd]

The URL *is* a space, and is caused by a page either on your site or on some other site linking to "http://example.com/ " instead of linking to "http://example.com/".

There is a lot of forum and blog auto-linking plug-ins with poor pattern matching that can cause this.

Something like this might help...

RewriteRule ^\ $ http://example.com/ [R=301,L]

RewriteRule ^%20 http://example.com/ [R=301,L]

[edited by: g1smd at 1:55 pm (utc) on Dec 4, 2010]

[norristudor]

well if I look at the actual anchor of this link to my site. it is written as

http://mysite.com/%20

- so yes I know its a space. But when it hits my site it throws a 404.

Thats what I want to prevent.

[norristudor]

just seen your edits... let me try that.

[norristudor]

g1smd
The first one worked!

You are one awesome guy! Thats done it. You have no idea how long I have been struggling with this stupid rule and overcomplicating.

thanks again.