The rules I had defined did not work, so I reverted to the original auto-generated file with a normal PASV mode FTP transfer... then, some functionalities started failing.
I noticed that URLs were "deformed". Here an example:
http://[my domain]/catalog/index.php?cPath=5_183_186%0F%22ucts_id%3D3476
After a bit of investigation, I found some strange characters in the ftp-uploaded .htaccess file, for instance in the following block:
#index.php - subcategories2 - buy now
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^buy=now¤cy=([a-zA-Z]{3})&osCsid=([a-z0-9]*) [OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^buy=now¤cy=([a-zA-Z]{3}) [OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^buy=now&osCsid=([a-z0-9]*) [OR]
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^buy=now
RewriteRule ^([a-z0-9\-]*)-([0-9]*)/([a-z0-9\-]*)-([0-9]*)/([a-z0-9\-]*)-([0-9]*)/([a-z0-9\-]*)-([0-9]*).html$ index.php?cPath=$2_$4_$6"ucts_id=$8&action=buy_now [L,QSA]
Please look the [¤cy] and the ["] ... it appears in other parts of the file, but always in the same place : products, etc.
So I reformated all the ["] (ignoring the [¤cy] cause I do not use "currency" feature in my site), saved and uploaded again. Problem was still here. I downloaded what I had just uploaded, and found again exactly the same bad-writings, in the same place. NOTE : file is indeed rewritten, permissions are ok, I mean there is a real change of the file.
Have you seen that before? Would it do with regenerating all the .htaccess ? What are the risks or possible losses at regenerating? And also, how can I then add custom rules?
Thanks for your help
