performance impact of order of rewrite rules when using apache mod_rewrite

Question

while i have read about the \'sometimes un-obvious way\' that mod_rewrite handles the various rewrite rules you feed it (eg: first reading RewriteRule, then going back to ch

Answer 1

From the documentation for RewriteRule:

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_rewrite.html#rewriterule

The order in which these rules are defined is important - this is the order in which they will be applied at run-time.

So if you put your common rewrite rules at the top, and whenever possible mark them with the L flag, it won't process the rest of the rules, and you'll have an optimized configuration:

last|L - Stop the rewriting process immediately and don't apply any more rules