The phrasing of http://httpd.apache.org/docs/trunk/en/mod/mod_rewrite.html#rewriterule sometimes assumes per-directory rules are defined in an htaccess file, for example in "The directory path where the rule is defined is stripped from the currently mapped filesystem path before comparison (up to and including a trailing slash)."
"The directory path where the rule is defined" could be substituted with "The directory-path of the directory to which the rule is associated".

By the way:
*The Syntax defines "directory-path" (with a dash) rather than "directory path".
*In the first sentence, "perl compatible regular expression" could be replaced with "regex", defined in http://httpd.apache.org/docs/trunk/en/mod/directive-dict.html#Syntax