ForceType/SetHandler code - why does this work?

Question

I tried this code, although it works for some reason, aren't there mistakes in it?

I'm not sure what the best way to correct this is, but here it is...

<Files .+*^$[]()>
ForceType application/x-httpd-php
SetHandler application/x-httpd-php
</Files>

Not sure why it works; is this a regex error? Does this mean I could have an extensionless file with PHP code and images etc. and it would work well, or is there alternative code for this?

(bear in mind this is c&p'd from a PHP scripts forum...)

Answer 1

No, this doesn't look like it follows PCRE. The Apache parsing is a subset of that. If you want to know exactly why it works, you'd need to download the apache source and start reading srclib/pcre/pcre.c.

If you're just looking to set the PHP handler for any file without an extension, something sane might look like this:

<FilesMatch ^\b\w*\b$>
    SetHandler application/x-httpd-php
</FilesMatch>

It's not clear what you mean by "works", however. You might mean that it doesn't create an error, or that it has some sort of other unexpected behavior that is useful..