Why Nginx Matches Literal Locations Before Regex – Uncover the Real Order

1. Matching order correction – Contrary to common belief, Nginx first matches ordinary (literal) locations, then regular‑expression locations. Regular‑expression matches can override the longest‑prefix result of ordinary locations, but exact matches stop further searching.

2. Execution logic – Ordinary locations use the "maximum prefix" rule; regular‑expression locations are checked in the order they appear in the configuration file. The first regex that matches stops the search.

Official documentation

Reference: Nginx Http Core Module – location

Syntax : location [=|~|~*|^~|@] /uri/ { … } Context : server This directive selects different configurations based on the request URI.

Literal strings are checked first; regexes require a prefix ( ~ for case‑sensitive, ~* for case‑insensitive).

Matching process

Exact matches with the = prefix – search stops immediately.

Remaining literal strings – if a match uses ^~, search stops; otherwise continue to regexes.

Regular expressions – evaluated in configuration order; the first match wins.

If no regex matches, the result from step 2 is used.

Exact matches (including those without a prefix that happen to be strict) also halt regex processing.

Prefix meanings

=

– exact match only. ^~ – treat as non‑regex; stop further regex checks. ~ – case‑sensitive regex. ~* – case‑insensitive regex. @ – named location, used for internal redirects (e.g., error_page handling).

Installation notes

wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.4.6.tar.gz
 tar zxvf nginx-1.4.6.tar.gz
 ./configure
 make
 make install

The rewrite module requires the PCRE library; install it with yum -y install pcre-devel openssl openssl-devel or disable the module with --without-http_rewrite_module.

Practical examples

Various server blocks demonstrate how /, ^~, =, and regex locations interact, showing results of curl requests for different URIs (e.g., /, /index.html, /test.jsp).

Named location example:

server {
    listen 9090;
    server_name localhost;
    location / { root html; index index.html; allow all; }
    error_page 404 = @fallback;
    location @fallback { proxy_pass http://www.baidu.com; }
}

If a requested URI is missing, Nginx forwards the request to the named location, which proxies to an external site.