mod_rewrite question

[macaco]

I'd like to redirect URLs in a directory in this way:

categories/anything/index.php?id=13 to
categories/index.php?id=13

To achieve that, I've uploaded a .htaccess file to "categories " directory that contains the following:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^[.*]/index\.php\?id= ([0-9]*)$ index.php?id=$1
</IfModule>

But it keeps giving a 500 error

How do I fix this?

Many Thanks

[Atli]

What does the error log say?

My guess is that it is the [.*] that is causing the problem. The asterisk should be outside the class, and seeing as there is only one character, the class isn't really needed.

So I would try something like:

RewriteRule ^.*index\.php\?id=([0-9]*)$ index.php?id=$1