Mod_Rewrite help to understand this expression

RewriteRule ^user/(\w{1,50})\-\-(\w{1,50})\-(\w{1,50})\.html users.php?na开发者_Go百科me=$1 [L]

url looks like this

site.com/user/first-middle-last.html

for some reason variable $_GET['name'] inside users.php returns only first name part not entire first middle and last, how can i make it process full name into name var

Your regex has 3 capturing groups:

^user/(\w{1,50})-(\w{1,50})-(\w{1,50})\.html
      \________/ \________/ \________/
          $1         $2         $3

$1 is the first group capturing: (\w{1,50}). If you want the whole text, try:

RewriteRule ^user/(\w{1,50}-\w{1,50}-\w{1,50})\.html users.php?name=$1 [L]
                  \__________________________/
                              $1

In addition, note that you don't have to escape dashes (-) outside of character set ([...]), and you have two dashes between the first and second word.

If you need, you can have it both ways - capture each word and the whole name:

^user/((\w{1,50})-(\w{1,50})-(\w{1,50}))\.html
      |\________/ \________/ \________/|
      |    $2         $3         $4    |
      \________________________________/
                      $1

Each $n references a parenthesized group. In this case, $1 represents the first (\w{1,50}); the rest is being trapped into $2 and $3. Assuming the double hyphen is in fact supposed to be mapped to a single one (this is not clear from your example), you probably want

RewriteRule ^user/(\w{1,50})\-\-(\w{1,50})\-(\w{1,50})\.html users.php?name=$1-$2-$3 [L]

If that was a mistake and you do want the entire first--middle-last expression being rewritten, then @Kobi's answer is more correct than cutting it up and re-joining.