Do you have to escape a forward slash when using mod_rewrite?

With regards to the forward slash "/" when giving a regex to RewriteRule or RewriteCond, or anything else related to .htaccess in particular, is there a need to escape the forward slash?

Here is an example of what I am trying to achieve

RewriteEngine on
RewriteOptions inherit

RewriteBase /uk-m-directory/
RewriteRule ^(region|region\/|regions\/)$ regions [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^(county|county\/|counties\/)$ counties [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^(city|city\/|cities\/)$ cities [R=301,L]

The above works fine, and it continues to work fine when I remove the backslashes as shown below

RewriteEngine on
RewriteOptions inherit

RewriteBase /uk-m-directory/
RewriteRule ^(region|region/|regions/)$ regions [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^(county|county/|counties/)$ counties [R=301,L]
RewriteRule ^(city|city/|cities/)$ cities [R=301,L]

Which one is the correct way? Are they both wrong? Is there any special reason the forward slash should be escaped, or shouldn't?

My guess is that the forward slash does not need to be escaped because it is开发者_JAVA百科n't a special character, as far as I know. But I just want to be sure.

In case you're wondering the point of this code, it redirects city, county, and region (with or without a forward slash) to their plural equivalents. Furthermore if the plural has a forward slash it removes the forward slash.

No, you do not have to escape slashes. Forward slashes don't have any special meaning in regular expressions.

The one common character that has bitten me in the past is ? in query strings. That one you do have to escape.