[RESOLVED] Parse all pages through index.php ?

[gaugelive]

Hi.
I have tried searching and reading posts on mod rewrite and forcetype but could not find a solution.

I have a small site i am trying to setup to use url's such as.

domain.com/apple
domain.com/mango

What i would like to achieve is:
If someone types in just domain.com/ they are taken to the index page. That part is fine.
But if there is anything after the / (i.e apple or mango) the same index page treats that as a variable and displays a page accordingly.

I think i get get it to work with a structure such as domain.com/fruit/apple
but not able to understand how to work with just domain.com/apple as the url

i hope this was clear. Would appreciate any help.
thanks.

[bradgrafelman]

Using mod_rewrite ...

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/(.*) index.php?variableNameHere=$1

[gaugelive]

I tried that, I couldnt get it to work.
I have tried reading the manual on mod_write but still couldnt understand how to get it to work.

What i did manage to get working is

RewriteRule ^{([A-Za-z0-9-]+)?$} index.html?which_lo=$1 [L]

But obviously that only accepts certain characters and not . (dots) which i have in some links.

(.*) just doesnt work and i get 404 errors

Do you have any suggestions on what else i could try ?

[bradgrafelman]

This is my only other suggestion:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{SCRIPT_FILENAME}  !-f
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?which_loc=$1