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Notes Compatibility: This entry contains information about which versions of Apache support the
directive.
Override: Apache directives belong to different categories. The override field is used to specify
which directive categories can appear in.htaccess per-directory configuration files. A brief
explanation of the directive follows these entries in the documentation, and a reference to related
directives or documentation may appear at the end.
4.2.2 Containers

Directive containers, also called sections, limit the scope for which directives apply. If directives
are not inside a container, they belong to the default server scope (server config) and apply to
the server as a whole.

These are the default Apache directive containers:

<VirtualHost>? A VirtualHost directive specifies a virtual server. Apache enables you to host
different Web sites with a single Apache installation. Directives inside this container apply to a
particular Web site. This directive accepts a domain name or IP address and an optional port as
arguments. You will learn more about virtual hosts in Hour 22, “Apache Performance Tuning
and Virtual Hosting.”

<Directory>, <DirectoryMatch>? These containers allow directives to apply to a certain directory
or group of directories in the file system. Directory containers take a directory or directory pattern
argument. Enclosed directives apply to the specified directories and their subdirectories. The
DirectoryMatch container allows regular expression patterns to be specified as an argument. For
example, the following allows a match of all subdirectories of the www directory that are made
up of four numbers, such as a directory named after a year and month (0902 for September 2010):
<DirectoryMatch “^/www/.*/[0-9]{4}”>
<Location>, <LocationMatch>? These containers allow directives to apply to certain requested
URLs or URL patterns. They are similar to their Directory counterparts. LocationMatch takes a
regular expression as an argument. For example, the following matches directories containing
either “/my/data” or “/your/data”:
<LocationMatch “/(my|your)/data”>

<Files>, <FilesMatch>? Similar to Directory and Location containers, Files sections allow directives
to apply to certain files or file patterns.
Containers surround directives, as shown in Listing 1.

Listing 1 Sample Container Directives:

1. <Directory “/some/directory”>
2. SomeDirective1

3. SomeDirective2
4. </Directory>

5. <Location “/downloads/*.html”>

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