htaccess rewrite and GET variables

I am trying to get variables from URLs, rewritten by htaccess and which are passed on using GET.

At the moment I have:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule ^eating-out.php?sort=(.+)&page=(.*)$ dev1.php?cat=1&sort=$1&page=$2

PHP:

Which is getting me a 404 error page when I access eating-out.php.. meaning the page isn't found.

However, if I use this:

Options +FollowSymLinks
RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule ^eating-out.php dev1.php?cat=1

PHP:

And try and access eating-out.php?page=2 it won't work.. the value of $_GET['page'] is still nothing.

Any ideas?

 

Try
http://www.htaccesseditor.com/en.shtml

 

Also replied on NP:

The first one isn't working because sort and page are part of the query strings.

You should only need to add [QSA] to append the query string to the second rewrite:

RewriteRule ^eating-out.php dev1.php?cat=1 [QSA]

Code (markup):

or better yet

RewriteRule ^eating\-out\.php$ /dev1.php?cat=1 [L,QSA]

Code (markup):

 

Thank you sooooo much!! your a legend!! Works wonders