How to get /folder/subfolder to display as /subfolder/ using htaccess - .htaccess

Question

I'm trying to do the following...
Original path that needs to be rewritten, renamed, or redirected:
http://www.example.com/_plugin/notifications/
to:
http://www.example.com/notifications/
via root htaccess file...Any help would be greatly appreciated!
=================================================================
This does not work:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/_plugin/notifications$ /notifications [L]
This does not work either:
RewriteEngine On
RedirectMatch ^/_plugin/notifications$ /notifications/
This does not work either:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^notifications/(.*)$ /notifications$1 [R=301,NC,L]
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EDIT
With the help of #Starkeen - I have a few follow up questions to this.
Is there a way to shorten the .htaccess file up though if lets say I
have multiple subfolders within the folder instead of writing that 1
condition and the 2 rules for each subfolder?
How would I allow subfolders of the subfolder to display? Currently it is throwing a 404 at me... :(
============
Still need help with follow-up question #1, but I believe I got question #2.
SOLUTION (I believe) to follow-up question #2:
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} /_plugin/notifications/ [NC]
RewriteRule ^_plugin/notifications/(.*)$ /notifications/$1 [L,R]
RewriteRule ^notifications/(.*)$ /_plugin/notifications/$1 [L]

Answer 1

None of the rules you have tried are correct.
To redirect /folder/subfolder to /root/subfolder you need a permanent 301 Redirect rule something like the following :
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} /folder/subfolder/ [NC]
RewriteRule ^folder/subfolder/$ /subfolder/ [L,R]
The above will redirect http://example.com/folder/subfolder/ to http://example.com/subfolder .
You will get a 404 error if the /subfolder/ doesn't exist in the root dir. To avoid the 404 error you can rewrite the /subfolder/ uri back to its original location /folder/subfolder/ using an internal Rewrite just bellow the first one
:
RewriteRule ^subfolder/?$ /folder/subfolder/ [L]