Escape string within RewriteRule - apache

Question

I am currently chewing on this problem: I am reworking a sort of CMS system, the result will be that URLs will look entire differently, but I want to save links and bookmarks, so I scrathced this .htaccess file together:
RewriteEngine on
# Rewrite old links to match with new URL syntax:
# universal rewrite
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}~%{QUERY_STRING} ^(.*?\/*)? (viewuser|viewstory|reviews|news)\.php~(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.+).php$ %1?action=redirect&source=$1&%3 [R=301,L,NE]
And it works, http://example.com/news.php?action=newsstory&nid=51 actually becomes http://example.com/?action=redirect&source=news&action=newsstory&nid=51
But you can see the problem, a double action. Using 'action' is not the most inventive term, but it is what the script I need to feed is working with, and also what I am getting from the old one, so I need to either:
replace the second 'action' with anything else
or serialize/escape the entire part which is defined by %3 from, the RewriteCond
In case you are wondering, the question mark required the use of a RewriteCond, couldn't get it to work any other way, so any solution that gets rid of it is just as welcome.
Well, thanks for looking into and maybe even shedding a light onto things, I just made my way into the whole regex thing, but havewn't entirely figured how variables are passed from chained RewriteRule to another, maybe that would have been the way to got, but try and error didn't get me anywhere.

Answer 1

Try removing the NE flag and use a B:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}~%{QUERY_STRING} ^(.*?\/*)?(viewuser|viewstory|reviews|news)\.php~(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.+).php$ /?action=redirect&source=$1&%3 [R=301,L,B]
The only problem is that the %1 backreference will get encoded as well so I left that out. If you must have it there, you can try doing a two step rewrite:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}~%{QUERY_STRING} ^(.*?\/*)?(viewuser|viewstory|reviews|news)\.php~(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.+).php$ /special-rewrite-here?action=redirect&source=$1&%3 [L,B]
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[A-Z]+\ (.*?\/*)?(viewuser|viewstory|reviews|news)\.php~(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^special-rewrite-here$ /%1 [L,R=301]

Answer 2

Fixed with help from Jon Lin:
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}~%{QUERY_STRING} ^(.*?\/*)? (viewuser|viewstory|reviews|news)\.php~(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.+).php$ /special-rewrite-here?action=redirect&source=$1&old_data=%3 [B]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}~%{QUERY_STRING} ^(.*?\/*)? (viewuser|viewstory|reviews|news)\.php~(.+)$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^/.+$ %1 [L,R=301]
I had to do the RewriteCond again to preserve %1, and had to modify the second RewriteRule slightly, but he sure got me on the right track, so: problem solved, the rest will take place in PHP, that should be no problem then.