[solved] mod_rewrite errors (clean URLs)

[Jonny]

[problem]

I'm attempting to set up a siteto use clean URLS, and have followed the instructions for both .htaccess and config.php.

Here's the .htaccess of the root directory (the site is installed within a directory named "site")

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /site/

# 301 Redirect all requests that don't contain a dot or trailing slash to
# include a trailing slash
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.
RewriteRule ^(.*) %{REQUEST_URI}/ [R=301,L]

# Rewrites urls in the form of /parent/child/
# but only rewrites if the requested URL is not a file or directory
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.+)$ index.php?page=$1 [QSA]

And the config.php URL settings:

$config['assume_mod_rewrite'] = true;
$config['page_extension'] = '/';
$config['internal_pretty_urls'] = false;
$config['use_hierarchy'] = true;
$config['query_var'] = 'page';

Attempting to access the site results in a 500 Internal Server Error and the server log returns four instances of the following error:

RewriteCond: bad argument line '%{REQUEST_URI}\xca!/$'\n

mod_rewrite is active on the server.

Any ideas?

[solution]

The problem lay in the space characters introduced by copying from the CMSMS site and pasting in to my .htaccess file. Backspacing over and re-entering the spaces did the job.