by testing against a set of test patterns to make sure that is a valid syntax and does what you intend with a fully range of test URIs.
See regexpCheck.php below for a simple script that you can add to a private/test directory in your site to help you do this. I've kept this brief rather than pretty. Just past this into a file regexpCheck.php in a test directory to use it on your website. This will help you build up any regexp and test it against a list of test cases as you do so. I am using the PHP PCRE engine here, but having had a look at the Apache source, this is basically identical to the one used in Apache. There are many HowTos and tutorials which provide templates and can help you build your regexp skills.
<html><head><title>Regexp checker</title></head><body>
<?php
$a_pattern= isset($_POST['pattern']) ? $_POST['pattern'] : "";
$a_ntests = isset($_POST['ntests']) ? $_POST['ntests'] : 1;
$a_test = isset($_POST['test']) ? $_POST['test'] : array();
$res = array(); $maxM=-1;
foreach($a_test as $t ){
$rtn = @preg_match('#'.$a_pattern.'#',$t,$m);
if($rtn == 1){
$maxM=max($maxM,count($m));
$res[]=array_merge( array('matched'), $m );
} else {
$res[]=array(($rtn === FALSE ? 'invalid' : 'non-matched'));
}
}
?> <p> </p>
<form method="post" action="<?php echo $_SERVER['SCRIPT_NAME'];?>">
<label for="pl">Regexp Pattern: </label>
<input id="p" name="pattern" size="50" value="<?php echo htmlentities($a_pattern,ENT_QUOTES,"UTF-8");;?>" />
<label for="n"> Number of test vectors: </label>
<input id="n" name="ntests" size="3" value="<?php echo $a_ntests;?>"/>
<input type="submit" name="go" value="OK"/><hr/><p> </p>
<table><thead><tr><td><b>Test Vector</b></td><td> <b>Result</b></td>
<?php
for ( $i=0; $i<$maxM; $i++ ) echo "<td> <b>\$$i</b></td>";
echo "</tr><tbody>\n";
for( $i=0; $i<$a_ntests; $i++ ){
echo '<tr><td> <input name="test[]" value="',
htmlentities($a_test[$i], ENT_QUOTES,"UTF-8"),'" /></td>';
foreach ($res[$i] as $v) { echo '<td> ',htmlentities($v, ENT_QUOTES,"UTF-8"),' </td>';}
echo "</tr>\n";
}
?> </table></form></body></html>