Remove trailing slash after domain - apache

Question

This is my .htaccess file:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
# Remove multiple slashes anywhere in URL
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*)//(.*)$
RewriteRule . %1/%2 [R=301,L]
# Never use www prefix!
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.domain\.org [NC]
RewriteRule (.*) http://domain.org/$1 [R=301,L]
# Remove multiple slashes after domain
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ http://domain.org/$1 [R=301,L]
# Remove trailing slash in some cases
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.css/$ http://domain.org/$1.css [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.js/$ http://domain.org/$1.js [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.jpg/$ http://domain.org/$1.jpg [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.jpeg/$ http://domain.org/$1.jpeg [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.png/$ http://domain.org/$1.png [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.gif/$ http://domain.org/$1.gif [L,R=301]
RewriteRule ^(.*)\.xml/$ http://domain.org/$1.xml [L,R=301]
# Force trailing slash
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !index.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)\.css
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)\.js
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)\.jpg
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)\.jpeg
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)\.png
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)\.gif
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)\.xml
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !(.*)/$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://mydomain.org/$1/ [L,R=301]
#Removes access to the system folder by users.
#Additionally this will allow you to create a System.php controller,
#previously this would not have been possible.
#'system' can be replaced if you have renamed your system folder.
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^system.*
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?/$1 [L]
#Checks to see if the user is attempting to access a valid file,
#such as an image or css document, if this isn't true it sends the
#request to index.php
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L]
# MIME types
AddType text/css .css
AddType text/javascript .js
# Enable compression
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/css text/javascript text/x-css text/x-javascript text/x-js text/htm application/x-javascript application/javascript application/js application/x-js image/png image/gif image/jpg image/jpeg
#Skip browsers with known problems
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4 gzip-only-text/html
BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/4\.0[678] no-gzip
BrowserMatch \bMSIE !no-gzip !gzip-only-text/html
php_flag display_errors on
</IfModule>
<IfModule !mod_rewrite.c>
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php
</IfModule>
But, when I go to **/////, the trailing slashes will not go away. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

The %{REQUEST_URI} variable gets reduced of extra slashes when it gets prepped. So the condition RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^(.*)//(.*)$ will never match because for a request like http://domain.org////, the REQUEST_URI variable gets reduced to just /. Try using the THE_REQUEST variable:
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^([A-Z]{3,9})\ (.*)//([^\ ]*)
RewriteRule ^ %2/%3 [R=301,L]
Additionally, the prefix (the leading slash) gets stripped off of the request URI when rewrite rules are in an htaccess file, so the rule RewriteRule . %1/%2 [R=301,L] would never match because the regex . requires at least one character to match. When the URI is / and the leading slash gets stripped, the URI that's used to match in the url is a blank string. So using ^, or (.*), or something equivalent of "everything including nothing" regex needs to be used.