Hey guys,

Was wondering this:
If I wanted to use mod_rewrite (in .htaccess) to redirect a page to another page (or file), does:

• Apache tell the browser to go to that new location? - OR -
• Apache serve the page as scripted in .htaccess?

Ok, that's a little tricky. Real world example:
A webmaster of a file hosting site wants to generate a key for each individual download. So he temporarily creates a 'key' that expires after so much time (This is handled by PHP) that looks like this and is visible to the visitor:

somedomain.com/downloadfile/[xxkeyxx]/

However the file to be downloaded is located here:

somedomain.com/files/somedoc.pdf

If I were to tell .htaccess if the first url is to be 'rewritten' to the second url, does that mean that the second url is sent to the visitor's browser or does it not?

Thanks guys-

Answer's 2: Apache interprets the path, and serve content upon the translated path.
The browser is not redirected.