mod_rewrite or path_info for clean URLs

Question

I have always used mod_rewrite for creating clean looking URLs, until recently I didn’t know there was any other option. A few weeks back someone on here pointed out that exactly the same effect can be achieved using apache PATH_INFO. Thinking about it now, I assume this is what most PHP frameworks do, optionally relying on mod_rewrite purely to remove the index.php bootstrap from the URL.

All leads to a few questions:

1. Which is the better way of creating a clean and flexible URL structure like: /page/var/foo/bar/2?
2. What are the relative advantages/disadvantages of the two methods?
3. Which method peforms better in terms of resource usage etc.?

Thanks.

Answer 1

with pathinfo you will always have script name in the url, which looks pretty lame (and not considered valid by some agents). I'd suggest mod_rewrite as primary method with pathinfo or 404 handler as fallbacks.