Keith Devens .com

Probably the best way is to use mod_rewrite as Apache will hand over the url to your mod_rewrite recipe/code where you can do whatever you like to it.

Out of curiosity, why would you want to? (and yes, mod_rewrite is probably the answer, though I haven't really used it myself, and wouldn't know what rules to feed it)

I figured I could do it with mod_rewrite, but I was hoping there was some other way. I have to learn more about how Apache handles directories... from what I was reading, there is a definite reason why Apache behaves the way it does.

why would you want to?

Just a personal preference... I don't like URLs to end in a slash. Check out all the URLs I use on my site.

I'm still confused why you want to.
Not using trailing slashes for directory cause 2 trips to the server for all web clients: once for "/directoryfoo", which receives a "Location: /directoryfoo/" redirect response header, then a second request to the server for "/directorfoo/".

I believe this is a standard behaviour even on IIS on windows.

Shoot. I can't type this evening, but you get the idea.

Not using trailing slashes for directory cause 2 trips to the server

Yeah. That's why I'm not going to worry about it. However, if I used mod_rewrite, or, like I do on my site, a CMS that resolves URLs on its own, it wouldn't need the extra redirect.

Something else to try: MultiViews. I know it does some predefined mod_rewrite magic to make /foo hit /foo.htm, or /foo.htm.en. I've never tried it with directory names, but it may "just work".

Behaviour is determined by mod_dir:

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_dir.html

An interesting, related Directive is "UseCanonicalName":

http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/core.html#usecanonicalname

you can change the status of the directive UseCanonicalName to Off in the httpd.conf file...