Remove sub directory from URL?

Question

I'd like to rewrite:

http://www.example.com/item.html/category/something/something2

To :

http://www.example.com/item/something/something2

Thus getting rid of "category" and ".html"

I have tried:

#rewrite to remove "category" and ".html"
RewriteEngine On 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^item.html/category/
RewriteRule ^item/(.*)$ /item/category/$1 [QSA,L]

Answer 1

Do you need the RewriteCond, just do the rewrite like so:

RewriteEngine On 
RewriteRule ^item.html/category/(.*)$ /item/$1 [QSA,L]