.htaccess to match anything containing a character
<p>I am trying to write a rule to skip over a fake directory with .htaccess. I have achieved this like</p>

<pre><code>RewriteRule ^fake/(.+)$ /$1 [N,NC]
</code></pre>

<p>so now /fake/real would just get /real</p>

<p>But I have a need to target anything which is in the format xx-xx like en-gb or en-us</p>

<p>I have tried something like </p>

<pre><code>RewriteRule ^a{5}/(.+)$ /$1 [N,NC]
</code></pre>

<p>which should try and match anything of length 5. But this does not work, and is only half the job anyway. How can I match anything like xx-xx ?</p>