[users@httpd] Pages using 'look-back' feature w. forceType and symbolic links run twice

[How Can ThisBe <ho...@hotmail.com>]

My site is running on Apache/1.3.26. Since July I have been using the apache 
'look back' feature (not sure correct term for this - where it scans 
backwards down the URL if it doesn’t find what it's looking for) with a 
combination of forceType and symbolic links to allow me to use search engine 
friendly URI like

http://onemoremonky.com/pics/chimp

to display an image from the pics gallery, rather than say
http://onemoremonky.com/pics.php?i=chimp

I am using forced type in my .htaccess file
<Files pics>
	ForceType application/x-httpd-php
</Files>

and making a symbolic link from pics to pics.php, then extracting the 
variable/s from the $REQUEST_URI.

This seemed to be working well. Problem is on the server side it seems to be 
processing the php page twice. In the php code I have a function to store 
user information in a database with each page load.  I have recently noticed 
that each page request to the pics section seems to be calling the php page 
twice. So for instance,

http://onemoremonky.com/pics/chimp

is accessing this page then running again for

http://onemoremonky.com/pics/

Only the first page displays to the user and is logged in the access log but 
the server side page counter shows a second call to 
<http://onemoremonky.com/pics/> with the referer as 
<http://onemoremonky.com/pics/chimp>.

Indeed if you call <http://onemoremonky.com/pics/> there is often a second 
or third call to itself.

There are no redirects of any kind in the php script and presumably if this 
was the culprit the page would actualy redirect. So it seems as if on the 
server side the PHP page is processing redundantly. Is this a bug, how 
'look-back' should be working or is my setup at fault.

Apologies for the long winded explanation. Any suggestions would be greatly 
appreciated,

_________________________________________________________________
The new MSN 8: advanced junk mail protection and 2 months FREE* 
http://join.msn.com/?page=features/junkmail


---------------------------------------------------------------------
The official User-To-User support forum of the Apache HTTP Server Project.
See <URL:http://httpd.apache.org/userslist.html> for more info.
To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@httpd.apache.org
   "   from the digest: users-digest-unsubscribe@httpd.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@httpd.apache.org