Mod_rewrite or path_info for clean urls

I've always used mod_rewrite to generate clean urls, until recently I didn't know there was another option. A few weeks ago, someone here pointed out that the exact same effect can be achieved with apache PATH_INFO

. Thinking about it now, I am assuming that this is what most PHP frameworks do, not necessarily relying on mod_rewrite to simply remove the loading bin index.php

from the url.

This all leads to several questions:

• What is the best way to create a clean and flexible url structure like /page/var/foo/bar/2
  
  :?
• What are the relative advantages / disadvantages of the two methods?
• Which method displays better in terms of resource usage, etc.?

Thank.