How to do a permanent 301 redirect?

[PFOnline]

Hi all, this should be a pretty easy question... :)

We recently had to change our main page from index.html to index.shtml and for search engines and just in case some sites out there linked to mysite.com/index.html I'd like to do a 301 permanet redirect from index.html to index.shtml

How would I do this? (using .htaccess)

Thanks!

[Birdman]

redirectpermanent /index.html ht*p://www.yoursite.com/index.shtml

I put the * in there to delink.

[PFOnline]

Thanks birdman. :)

[PFOnline]

One more thing, should I delete the index.html file or leave it..... Or does it matter?

[Birdman]

Delete it since all requests are sent to the .shtml page anyway.

[PFOnline]

OK, great... Thanks again birdman, it works. :)