What’s the point of the default .htaccess?

Ok, I figured this out:

RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

The single dot in the 3rd line matches any single character, but the replacement applies to the whole string. So, whatever URL you asked for, if it doesn’t match an existing file or directory name, is turned into a request for index.php. The PHP code then processes the entire original URL and decides what page to generate. All the required information is in the database, not the .htaccess. So, it does actually ‘enable’ permalinks, in the sense that it allows the PHP code to see and act on the original URL.

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