RewriteRule running twice

Sometimes it seems that RewriteRule is running twice, even we use the [L] flag.

The truth is: it really runs twice (or even more times)! But only when URL is changed.

The [L] flag stops the running of rules following it, but if URL is changed, the new URL will be parsed again from the beginning.

There are many solutions to that (e.g., by using RewriteCond), but the one I used is to put, as first rule, one to tell the RewriteEngine to do nothing if the URL is what I want:


RewriteEngine on

# index is the last rule - is what I want, so doesn't change anything
# and go to it (thank's to [L])!
RewriteRule ^index.php$ - [L,QSA]

# get user id - URL changed, so [L] will cause the new URL to be reparsed
# - and so it will be matched on the above rule.
RewriteRule ^user/(.*)$ index.php?user=$1 [L,QSA]

# in case of user/..., following rules don't apply,
# since the above rule has [L]
# ...

See this post in Portuguese.