Am I missing a flag or something? RewriteRule tip needed

Question

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)$ index.php?p=$1&l=$2
RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/$ index.php?p=$1&l=$2

this works fine if I do site.com/param_one/param_two/, but returns a 404 when I omit param_two. I'm a newbie to routing requests with htaccess, is there a simple quick fix?

Answer 1

The quantifier + means one or more repetitions. But /param_one/ would require zero or more repetitions. So try the * quantifier to have zero or more repetitions:

RewriteRule ^([a-zA-Z0-9_]+)/([a-zA-Z0-9_]*)$ index.php?p=$1&l=$2