htaccess file necessity

I just noticed that I have never uploaded the .htaccess file for various Xojo Web cgi apps and they run fine, because I didn’t notice it in the build folder because of it being hidden. What is the consequence of not doing that?

Could the lack of an .htaccess file explain my occasional Internal Server Error 500 with these Web apps? In any event I have uploaded .htaccess to all these Web app folders.

It shouldn’t. The htaccess file is more for users who don’t have control over the Apache configuration on their server, but it’s rare that it’s even used.