<Directory> and </Directory> are used to enclose a group of directives that will apply only to the named directory, sub-directories of that directory, and the files within the respective directories. Any directive that is allowed in a directory context may be used. Directory-path is either the full path to a directory, or a wild-card string using Unix shell-style matching. In a wild-card string, ? matches any single character, and * matches any sequences of characters. You may also use [] character ranges. None of the wildcards match a `/' character, so <Directory "/*/public_html"> will not match /home/user/public_html , but <Directory "/home/*/public_html"> will match. Example:

<Directory "/usr/local/httpd/htdocs">
 Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
</Directory>

Directory paths may be quoted, if you like, however, it must be quoted if the path contains spaces. This is because a space would otherwise indicate the end of an argument.

Regular expressions can also be used, with the addition of the ~ character. For example:

<Directory ~ "^/www/[0-9]{3}">
</Directory>

would match directories in /www/ that consisted of three numbers.

If multiple (non-regular expression) <Directory> sections match the directory (or one of its parents) containing a document, then the directives are applied in the order of shortest match first, interspersed with the directives from the .htaccess files. For example, with

<Directory "/">
 AllowOverride None
</Directory>
<Directory "/home">
 AllowOverride FileInfo
</Directory>

for access to the document /home/web/dir/doc.html the steps are:

• Apply directive AllowOverride None (disabling .htaccess files).
• Apply directive AllowOverride FileInfo (for directory /home ).
• Apply any FileInfo directives in /home/.htaccess , /home/web/.htaccess and /home/web/dir/.htaccess in that order.

Regular expressions are not considered until after all of the normal sections have been applied. Then all of the regular expressions are tested in the order they appeared in the configuration file. For example, with

<Directory ~ "abc$">
 # ... directives here ...
</Directory>

the regular expression section won't be considered until after all normal <Directory> s and .htaccess files have been applied. Then the regular expression will match on /home/abc/public_html/abc and the corresponding <Directory> will be applied.

Note that the default access for <Directory "/"> is to permit all access. This means that Apache httpd will serve any file mapped from an URL. It is recommended that you change this with a block such as

<Directory "/">
 Require all denied
</Directory>

and then override this for directories you want accessible. See the Security Tips page for more details.

The directory sections occur in the apache2.conf file. <Directory> directives cannot nest, and cannot appear in a <Limit> or <LimitExcept> section.

See also

• How <Directory>, <Location> and <Files> sections work for an explanation of how these different sections are combined when a request is received