Trailing slash AND no file extension

Okay I need my URLs to be short, sweet and SEO.

I need them without the file extensions so as to be environment independent yet I want a trailing slash in case of content duplication.

Below is what I have (does not work):

#Trailing slashes
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://thinkingdays.co.cc/$1/ [L,R=301] 

#Hide the file extensions
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.php -f
RewriteRule (.*)/?$ $1.php

Code (markup):

So can anybody help me come up with code that works And can somebody please explain those symbols and stuff? I've been referencing to Apache's mod_rewrite guide to try to understand the symbols and stuff but I don't really understand their usage.

Cheers!

 

I found a script that works, but don't understand how

#No file extension
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME}\.php -f
RewriteRule ^([^/]+)/$ $1.php 

#Trailing slash
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(\.[a-zA-Z0-9]{1,5}|/)$
RewriteRule (.*)$ /$1/ [R=301,L]

Code (markup):

See, from my analysis it's basically saying:

1) Enable the RewriteEngine
2) If %{REQUEST_FILENAME} is not a directory
3) And it is, if ".php" is added to the end, a file,
4) Then redirect to... ? What?

Firstly when I enter homepage.com/index/ into the URL bar I don't get redirected anywhere. But I thought RewriteRule means to redirect? And what's this for "^([^/]+)/$"

Thanks!

 

Bumpppppppp