Q:

Why www.example.com/index.php/my/path/here is processed by index.php?

I am just curious, how is feature of apache is called that is directing requests like this
www.example.com/index.php/my/path/here

to a file index.php? At the first moment, you might think, that it would be correct if this request leads to 404 error page because there is no folder called index.php at the site root dir.
BTW, is there a possibility to turn off this Apache feature (if it is a feature) so that such requests really end up with 404?

A:

This isn't a URL rewrite feature. Or at least it doesn't need to be. See AcceptPathInfo Directive:

This directive controls whether
  requests that contain trailing
  pathname information that follows an
  actual filename (or non-existent file
  in an existing directory) will be
  accepted or rejected. The trailing
  pathname information can be made
  available to scripts in the
  PATH_INFO environment variable.
For example, assume the location
  /test/ points to a directory that
  contains only the single file
  here.html. Then requests for
  /test/here.html/more and
  /test/nothere.html/more both collect
  /more as PATH_INFO.

It was originally a CGI environment variable.

PATH_INFO

The extra path information, as given
  by the client. In other words, scripts
  can be accessed by their virtual
  pathname, followed by extra
  information at the end of this path.
  The extra information is sent as
  PATH_INFO. This information should
  be decoded by the server if it comes
  from a URL before it is passed to the
  CGI script.

