Using mod_rewrite in .htaccess both in site root and in subdirectory

My dilemma:

In .htaccess on my root website:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.example\.com [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L]

      

        
        
        
      

    

In .htaccess in subdirectory / foo

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^page1\.html$ /foo/page2.html [R=301]

      

        
        
        
      

    

First, I'm trying to ensure that all requests include the beginning of www. In the second case, I redirect requests for page1.html to the foo subdirectory of page2.html, also in that subdirectory.

In my browser, trying to visit:

http://www.example.com/foo/page2.html <== works, good

http://www.example.com/foo/page1.html & lt == == redirects to http://www.example.com/foo/page2.html , good

http://example.com/foo/page1.html <== redirects to http://www.example.com/foo/page2.html , good

http://example.com/foo/page2.html <== no redirection happens, bad

==> Should redirect to: http: //**www.**example.com/foo/page2.html

As a result of experimentation, it would seem that the redirect rules in the .htaccess file in the site root of the site only take effect for requests to pages in that IF subdirectory , that this subdirectory does not contain an .htaccess file or it does and specifies a rewrite rule that takes effect for this specific request.

Can anyone see what I am doing wrong? ... How can I get the rewrite rule that www. if it's missing for http://example.com/foo/page2.html ?

Thanks hop it worked!

For the record, I had to change the rewrite rule in the file at the root of the site so that:

RewriteRule ^.*$ http://www.example.com%{REQUEST_URI} [R=301,L]

      

        
        
        
      

    

This is normal. Thank!