[RESOLVED] .htaccess check

[bpat1434]

Just need a check guys. I'm trying to get my .htaccess file to work, but for some odd reason, it gives me 500 Internal server errors. The exact error is:
"GET /path/to/file" 500 637 "...."

Not sure why. What I'm trying to do is if anyone requests:
/path/random_string/one of two items/random_string_optional
then redirect them. I came up with this:

Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /path/
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/([source]+[s]?)(.*) /sources/$1$3
RewriteRule ^([^/]*)/([example]+[s]?)(.*) /examples/$1$3

I've also tried making it really simple, and it still doesn't work. Any ideas why it's creating a server error?

[bpat1434]

Aight, so I've tracked the problem down to:

Invalid command '\xff\xfeO', perhaps mis-spelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration

So, I've tried saving the file as ANSI, Unicode, and UTF-8. It's not saving as a text-file, so I'm not sure where it's getting those characters. I've looked up 0xff and found out that it's the "eo" character...

Anyone have any ideas?

bump @ 2:25 pm EST (25 hours past initial post)

[MarkR]

I wonder if you're saving .htaccess as a UTF-8 file with a byte order mark at the beginning of it? As far as I'm aware, Apache config files need to be in ASCII.

Those characters look like a UTF8 byte order mark to me.

Some editors do this automatically (VS.NET ?), others may optionally do so.

Use one which does not.

Mark

[bpat1434]

shear genius!! That got that annoying error out of the way....

NOw comes the time of formatting it properly to redirect... that's a whole 'nother task that doesn't want to work....

[edit]
And solved.... thanks for the help Mark.