Is the ^ (starts with caret) relative to the .htaccess file or relative to the site root?

Question

if I have an .htaccess file on my site located at example.com/folder1/folder2/.htaccess

and I want to write a rule that effects a page at example.com/folder1/folder2/page.php

Would i need to make the rule like:

RewriteRule ^page\.php$ page/

Or as

RewriteRule ^folder1/folder2/page\.php$ page/

Basically is the ^ (starts with) relative to the .htaccess file or relative to the site root?

Answer 1

Depends on your RewriteBase

So with RewriteBase /, ^ is relative to web root. In which case you would need ^folder1/folder2/page.php