title: What are the .htaccess elements REQUEST_FILENAME and THE_REQUEST?
body: <p>What is returned by %{REQUEST_FILENAME} and %{THE_REQUEST}?</p>
  
  <p>I was just checking over our .htaccess file and it dawned on me, I have very little knowledge of this.  The code below uses both.  It works I just want understand it.</p>
  
  <pre><code>#remove / at the end of URL
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteRule ^(.+)/$ /$1 [L,R=301]
  
  #remove /index.php at the end of URL
  RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^.*/index.php
  RewriteRule ^(.*)index.php$ /$1 [R=301,L] 
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Cheers,
  Mark</p>