301 redirect not precise enough

[agneslesage]

Hello
I have set this 301 redirect:

Redirect 301 /museum/departments http://www.mysite.com/museum/collections

The problem is, I want
the page '/museum/departments' to be redirected, but it seems soem engines think that also '/museum/departments/object' must be redirected and that creates kind of fake 404 errors on '/museum/collections/object' and it seems also problms for robots using my sitemap.

Did I do soemhting worng?
Should I add a slash (/) at the end or something?

Redirect 301 /museum/departments http://www.mysite.com/museum/collections/

[phranque]

you can use RedirectMatch to specify a regular expression and then you can end anchor the pattern.

[agneslesage]

mmm...
I don't think I 'can' do that (due my limited skills!)
Would you specify?

Redirect 301 /museum/departments [mysite.com...]

[phranque]

IMPORTANT: Please Use Example.com For Domain Names in Posts:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/apache/4452736.htm [webmasterworld.com]

Regex Tutorial - Start and End of String or Line Anchors:
http://www.regular-expressions.info/anchors.html [regular-expressions.info]

[agneslesage]

So that would do
Rewriterule $departments [mysite.com...]

Is that right?
But that would not enable departments/ to be redirected...?

Again, I want

[phranque]

IMPORTANT: Please Use Example.com For Domain Names in Posts - Apache Web Server forum at WebmasterWorld:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/apache/4452736.htm [webmasterworld.com]

[agneslesage]

So that would do

Rewriterule $departments http://www.example.com/museum/collections/ 

Is that right?
But I am afraid that would also enable 'departments/' (with a slash at the end) to be redirected...?

Again, I want only URL ending with 'department' or 'department/'to be redirected, but not somethign like 'department/object/'

Thanks, and sorry for haing to correct

[g1smd]

Use

^department/?$

as the rule pattern.

Make sure you add the

[R=301,L]

flags to force a 301 redirect (otherwise you get a 302).

[lucy24]

Is that right?

No. Anchors go in the place you are anchoring. If you want the text to begin with "abc" the anchor goes in front:

^abc

If you want the text to end with "xyz" the anchor goes at the end:

xyz$

Yes, both ^ and $ have other meanings in other areas of Regular Expression. They just do it to make your life a little more miserable.

[agneslesage]

Thanks,
So now I'll just test

Rewriterule ^department/?$ http://www.example.com/museum/collections/ [R=301,L]