rewrite.php or redirect.php

Hi, gurus! I want to redirect a user to a series of other directories if a "404 - not found" occurs. The script should look up the requested file in several directories and - if finally found - return this one. The god of apache´s mod_rewrite writes, this should better _not_ be done by an apache "RewriteRule", but with an ErrorDocument (e.g. "handle404.php"). Three problems/questions: 1) The variables passed to the "does_not_exist.php" to not automatically turn into PHP-variables. Nor "include " neither "require" allow passing variables via a HTTP-query string. So a (time consuming?) walk through some arrays needs to be done? 2) Is it really a performant way to: - let a 404 occur - call the error document - update error_log and access_log - walk through the directories - restore the variables from the original request - call the "does_exist.php"? 3) Since this behaviour can be the standard one (instead of finding the requested doc by first hit) the error_log will definitely explode. (Okay, can be cleaned by cron, but makes it hard to find the 'real' mistakes) If some points here seem off topic please just ignore. :-) Thank you very much for any opinion! Tino www.interpool-online.de