RewriteRule: cannot compile regular expression

mod_rewrite error_log message.

[Jesse_Smith]

What does this error_log message mean?

[Sun Aug 17 00:23:59 2003] [alert] [client XXXXXXXXXXXX] /directory/directory/directory/.htaccess: RewriteRule: cannot compile regular expression '^file\-locale\-(.*)\-mode\(.*)\-page_num\-(.*)\-node\-(.*).html$'

[bcc1234]

(.*).html should be (.*)\.html

cause what you have is (.*) any number of characters and right after that . as any character, so "any number of characters + any character" does not make sense.

[jdMorgan]

Jesse_Smith,

I also recommend escaping the underscore. At the same time, there is usually no need to escape hyphens.

Jim

[bird]

I also recommend escaping the underscore.

Um, and what's that supposed to be good for? As far as I'm aware of, underscores have no special meaning in RewriteRules.