I want to process all incoming requests through a single script (index.php in web-root). So, the following is what currently happens: http://localhost/foo/bar/baz Is routed by Apache (through .htaccess) to: http://localhost/index.php?url=foo/bar/baz This works well, however, in Firefox I am able to do this: http://localhost/foo\ - notice the backslash. And Apache, instead of doing: /index.php?url=foo\ Emits a generic error page saying: Object not found! The requested URL was not found on this server. If you entered the URL manually please check your spelling and try again. If you think this is a server error, please contact the webmaster. Error 404 localhost Apache/2.2.14 (Win32) DAV/2 mod_ssl/2.2.14 OpenSSL/0.9.8l mod_autoindex_color PHP/5.3.1 mod_apreq2-20090110/2.7.1 mod_perl/2.0.4 Perl/v5.10.1 Directly going to: http://localhost/index.php?url=foo\ works without issues, however. All the sites that I've seen on the internet seem to be able to handle backslashes gracefully (e.g., http://stackoverflow.com/tags/php\\\\\). I consider this behavior a bug and I want to force Apache to forward backslashes correctly. Here's my .htaccess file in its entirety: RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [L] How can I make this work properly?