Using a folder name as a file parameter?

Hello all,

Is it possible to configure a server to pass subfolder names under
a certain folder as parameters to a file? For example:

.../search/shoes
would be interpreted by the server as
.../search/index.asp?query=shoes

Or:

.../product/0314
would become
.../product/productdetail.asp?productID=0314

This way, you can have simple URLs that point to a specific query,
search result, item info, etc that is retrieved from a database.
Besides the obvious simplicity or having a shorter URL, you could
eventually change your operating technology (in this case ASP) and
still keep your URLs valid. W3C rightly advocates unchanging,
not-technology-specific URLs, so this kind of technique would be
great.
Can it be done? Thanks in advance.

Diego

Yes, take a look at mod_rewrite.
If you just want to use "folders" as parameters for really existing
scripts look at the PATH_INFO environment variable.
Regards,
johannes