Redirect to Apache built-in 404 page with mod_rewrite?

You can use the R flag on the RewriteRule to force a redirect with a given status code:

While this is typically used for redirects, any valid status code can be given here. If the status code is outside the redirect range (300-399), then the Substitution string is dropped and rewriting is stopped as if the L flag was used.

So this:

RewriteRule ^/?page\.html$ - [R=404]

would return the default 404 page for /page.html. Since this is a regexp, remember the escaping \. and anchoring $.

- is ignored (i.e. “the Substitution string is dropped”), but there still needs to be something there to keep the rule well-formed.

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