CodeIgniter 2 no longer able to use PATH_INFO after modifying .htaccess

I'm brand new to CI and I'm trying to remove the annoying "index.php" from the URLs. This is the .htaccess I'm using:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?/$1 [L]

As you can see, I have to use QUERY_STRING to make the new URL work (note the question mark after index.php). When I try to use PATH_INFO (i.e. without the question mark), I only get No input file specified error.

This is fine, and I'm OK with using QUERY_STRING if I have to, but I don't understand the problem because I was using PATH_INFO just fine before I started playing with the rewrite - i.e. the default of "example.com/index.php/controller/f开发者_高级运维unction" was working, and that uses PATH_INFO AFAIK.

Does anyone know why the htaccess breaks PATH_INFO in my example? Sorry for the stupid question.

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Try this:

RewriteEngine   on
RewriteCond     %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteCond     %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteRule     .* index.php/%{REQUEST_URI}   [L]

The rewrite rules above seem to work fine for an app that I'm currently working on... they pass the correct GET requests along with the proper PATH_INFO values.