Why is the redirect rule executed when the address does not exactly match?

Question

htaccess

There is a rule in htaccess:

Redirect 301 /cat-1/cat-2 http://site.ru/newcat/

When processing the following address:

http://site.ru/cat-1/cat-2/cat-3/material/

This rule fires and redirects to the page:

http://site.ru/newcat//cat-3/material/

It seems that it replaces the "/cat-1/cat-2" part and then just adds the rest of the address. Unless, in my case this rule should be executed?

Answer 1

Redirect is exactly how it works, it just checks if the path prefix matches.
To find an exact match, there is RedirectMatch.

RedirectMatch 301 ^/cat-1/cat-2$ http://site.ru/newcat/