RewriteRules for special characters

Let’s say you have to write RewriteRules for special characters (East Asian Languages in this example, but, it should work for any other).

Link that you want to work: http://domain.tls/리눅스
Destination http://domain.tld/linux

First you must convert/encode (I used http://people.w3.org/rishida/scripts/uniview/conversion.php)
리눅스 is converted to %EB%A6%AC%EB%88%85%EC%8A%A4
You can get this from your access.log file of your server if you access it.
Now, you have to escape the % to match the regexp. Replace % with \x:
\xEB\xA6\xAC\xEB\x88\x85\xEC\x8A\xA4

RewriteEngine On #add it in case it was not added above
ewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} domain.tld
RewriteRule ^/\xEB\xA6\xAC\xEB\x88\x85\xEC\x8A\xA4$ http://http://domain.tld/linux

Save.
Restart or reload.
mod_rewrite should be loaded.
Test!
Debug: read /var/log/httpd/error.log and access.log (or corresponding error/access log file for the vhost you want the rule to be added.

Why sometimes RewriteRules don’t work

I’m not an expert, but here is what you should check.

When you add a domain to be forwarded to a page on the same domain like this:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} domain-1.tld
RewriteRule ^/$ http://www.domain-1.tld/link/to/the/page/you/want/to/be/forwarded.htm [L]

And, after this you want another section named “section”of this site to be forwarded elsewhere, the other domain like this:
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} domain-1.tld
RewriteRule ^/section$ http://www.domain-2.tld/link/to/a/section.htm

This will not work.
This will not work even if you want to escape the /section by placing it above the rewriterule for /.
This is happening because of the [L] from the first rewrite.
[L] Tells Apache to not process any more RewriteRules if this one was successful.

Now add [L] for /section and you are good to go.