mod_rewrite help needed

Hi. I need some help with creating search engine friendly URLs. I know there is a lot of documentation but I am new to .htaccess and I just cannot wrap my head around it beyond the basics. I want to create different rules for different pages:

site.com/index.php?p=XX to site.com/XX AND site.com/XX/
site.com/browse.php to site.com/browse AND site.com/browse/
site.com/browse.php?cat=XXX to site.com/browse/XXX and site.com/browse/XXX/
site.com/profile.php?user=XX to site.com/user/XX and site.com/user/XX/
site.com/view.php to site.com/view and site.com/view/

the reason why I want the it to operate on both trailing slash and without is that people might sometimes enter the URL differently.

finally, does anyone know the best way to rewrite a search query URL, seeing I have both a simple search (1 field) and an advanced search (multiple fields). How would the variables be fed into the URL?

Thanks so much!

If you want when you write site.com/XX to execute site.com/index.php?p=XX

RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule ^\/browse(\/)?$ /browse.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^\/browse/(.*)(\/)?$ /browse.php?cat=$1 [NC]
# And so on for the rest. The index can use this one
RewriteRule ^\/(.*)$ /index.php?p=$1 [NC]

I wrote it like this

Code:

---

RewriteEngine On

RewriteRule ^\/browse(\/)?$ /browse.php [NC]
RewriteRule ^\/browse/(.*)(\/)?$ /browse.php?cat=$1 [NC]

RewriteRule ^\/(.*)$ /index.php?p=$1 [NC]

RewriteRule ^\/view/(.*)(\/)?$ /view.php?id=$1 [NC]

RewriteRule ^\/user/(.*)(\/)?$ /profile.php?user=$1 [NC]

RewriteRule ^\/upload(\/)?$ /upload.php [NC]

---

None of it works though...