htaccess RewriteRule to redirect from a directory that doesn't exist

Question

I am attempting to redirect any URLs that attempt to access a directory that doesn't exist, however I am getting a 404 when trying the following:

RewriteRule ^picco/(.*)$ /rangers/$1 [L,R=301]

There is no directory called picco however, when anyone tries to access a page picco/index.php for example I want to redirect to rangers/index.php .

Is this possible?

Answer 1

I've got it - the following works, it seems the introduction of RewriteBase had a substantial effect.

RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^picco(.*)$ /rangers/$1 [R=301,L]