The Request entry provides a powerful way to apply custom options to requests. It is a complement for the Directory and Extension entries. Basically, there are two differences between them:
Request "^/cgi-bin/example.pl\?op=modify.*" { Allow From 127.0.0.1 }
It will only allow to call the example.pl with the modify value in its first parameter op if the connections comes from localhost.
Directory /downloads { Handler file } Request "/downloads/.*\.iso" { DocumentRoot /mnt/bigdisk/isos/ }
It is a nice trick. Let's imagine the virtual server document root is /var/www. The request of http://example.com/downloads/file.zip will access to /var/www/downloads/file.zip, but the request of http://example.com/downloads/debian.iso will access /mnt/bigdisk/isos/debian.iso.