MVC htaccess rewrite - hide index - php

Question

I have a basic MVC structure with a restful uri design of:
mysite.com/appdir/:index/:controller/:action/
and I want to hide the index route parameter so my uri looks like:
mysite.com/appdir/:controller/:action/
My basic folder structure is:
appdir/
app/
-->Controller/
-->Model/
-->View/
config/
library/
public/
-->.htaccess
-->index.php
.htaccess
index.php
appdir/.htaccess:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^$ public/ [L]
RewriteRule (.*) public/$1 [L]
</IfModule>
appdir/public/.htaccess:
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?url=$1 [PT,L]
</IfModule>
<IfModule !mod_rewrite.c>
ErrorDocument 404 index.php
</IfModule>
I can't seem to hide the index, I've tried a number of rewrite rules and nothing seems to work. With CodeIgniter, I can usually add RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?/$1 [L,QSA] and problem solved however I've been working on this for 3 hours with no success.

Answer 1

First, request path allways starts with /
so first rules should be written like this
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/(.*)$ public/$1 [L]
Then I guess in the public dir's htaccess you should use
RewriteBase /public
And finally - why not just set public as DocumentRoot of the webserver
and put all the rules to the single file? in your setup appdir/index.php is never accessible.