mod_rewrite with spaces in the urls

Question

I need to set up some RewriteRules to redirect a URL which has a space in it. I've tried this:

RewriteRule ^article/with%20spaces.html$ /article/without_spaces.html [R=301,L]

... but it doesn't work. Putting in a space instead of %20 causes a 500 Internal Server Error. How do I add a space?

Answer 1

Try putting a \ in front of your space to escape it.

RewriteRule ^article/with\ spaces.html$ /article/without_spaces.html [R=301,L]