well you use the <Files> directive to tell apache to parse a non-.php ending file as php
eg parse all files called 'index' as if it were called index.php
<Files index>
ForceType application/x-httpd-php
</Files>
You could also try
<Location /index>
ForceType application/x-httpd-php
</Location>
to parse a file called index in your $DOCUMENT_ROOT for every request starting /index/
this is all from Tim Perdue's "Search engine friendly pages:
http://www.phpbuilder.com/columns/tim20000526.php3
