mod-rewrite rule works, but no output from file - regex

Question

thanks in advance, this is an odd problem, but probably is some internal processing I don't understand...
The rules and conditions work as expected except for one tiny problem.... it seems to be returning an empty file when the file is not empty...
On the bright side I got logging working, and am starting to have a clue about the very cryptic codes (thank you mr. apache and of course apache.org, and for those who want to test there regex: regex101.com)
Here is my log file:
[Sat Dec 06 19:04:49.939312 2014] [rewrite:trace1] [pid 5918] mod_rewrite.c(468): [client 192.168.1.100:55227] 192.168.1.100 - - [webtypography.dev/sid#7fdcea80dd68][rid#7fdcea7de0a0/initial] [perdir /var/www/webtypography.dev/public_html/] pass through /var/www/webtypography.dev/public_html/toc.php
this is my .htaccess file:
Options +FollowSymLinks -MultiViews
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^webtypography\.dev$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)\/$ $1.php [R=301,L]
A little more info: My intent is if you type in the url which includes a directory: /directory/ it is rewritten as directory.php and appended to the base url....works great except the big blank browser viewport...
[Sat Dec 06 19:04:49.939265 2014] [rewrite:trace3] [pid 5918] mod_rewrite.c(468): [client 192.168.1.100:55227] 192.168.1.100 - - [webtypography.dev/sid#7fdcea80dd68][rid#7fdcea7de0a0/initial] [perdir /var/www/webtypography.dev/public_html/] strip per-dir prefix: /var/www/webtypography.dev/public_html/toc.php -> toc.php
[Sat Dec 06 19:04:49.939301 2014] [rewrite:trace3] [pid 5918] mod_rewrite.c(468): [client 192.168.1.100:55227] 192.168.1.100 - - [webtypography.dev/sid#7fdcea80dd68][rid#7fdcea7de0a0/initial] [perdir /var/www/webtypography.dev/public_html/] applying pattern '^(.*)\\/$' to uri 'toc.php'
[Sat Dec 06 19:04:49.939312 2014] [rewrite:trace1] [pid 5918] mod_rewrite.c(468): [client 192.168.1.100:55227] 192.168.1.100 - - [webtypography.dev/sid#7fdcea80dd68][rid#7fdcea7de0a0/initial] [perdir /var/www/webtypography.dev/public_html/] pass through /var/www/webtypography.dev/public_html/toc.php
These are the only entries in my virtual log for that transaction (i created a separate log for this virtual host...) Also this is NOT a production server, but I am going to look at php.ini and the php error log.... I'm not allowed to comment so I must do this here?
php.ini is display_errors was off!
Now I got the errors I need... THANKS NIEL! Allow me to check these errors, they are simple to fix, how can I give you any credit for this?

Answer 1

If PHP or Apache produces empty output this is nearly always caused by an error in either your Apache configs, including .htaccess files, or in your PHP with display_errors being disabled (as it damn well should be on a production site - you never want to show server internals to a possible attacker).
First stop should be Apache's vhost error logs as they will contain the errors from all these sources.