Name

BrowserMatch and BrowserMatchNoCase

Synopsis

BrowserMatch regex 
                  env1[=value1] env2[=value2] ...
BrowserMatchNoCase regex 
                  env1[=value1] env2[=value2] ...
Server config, virtual host, directory, .htaccess (from Apache v 1.3.14)

regex is a regular expression matched against the client’s User-Agent header, and env1, env2, ... are environment variables to be set if the regular expression matches. The environment variables are set to value1, value2, etc., if present.

So, for instance, we might say:

BrowserMatch ^Mozilla/[23] tables=3 java

The symbol ^ means start from the beginning of the header and match the string Mozilla/ followed by either a 2 or 3. If this is successful, then Apache creates and, if required, specifies values for the given list of environment variables. These variables are invented by the author of the script, and in this case they are:

tables=3
java

In this CGI script, these variables can be tested and take the appropriate action.

BrowserMatchNoCase is simply a case-blind version of BrowserMatch. That is, it doesn’t care whether letters are upper- or lowercase. mOZILLA works as well as MoZiLlA.

Note that there is no difference between BrowserMatch and SetEnvIf User-Agent. BrowserMatch exists for backward compatibility.