Could any one tell me what the difference between / and /* in servlet mapping url-pattern?

Question

we can define a servlet in web.xml and specify the url-pattern， I often specify the url-pattern into "/*"， but in Spring MVC，it‘s value is "/"，if I use "/*"， I even couldn't visit the welcome file，so any one could tell me what the difference between / and /* , thank you

Answer 1

Please check your welcome file list specified in web.xml. I've faced a similar situation before. When I named my welcome file as index.jsp and had many other additional names (like index.html, etc) mentioned in web.xml. When I removed all of them except index.jsp, it worked. I'm not sure if it would work for you. Please give it a try and post your feedback.

Answer 2

As pointed by Mohamed the issue may be elesewhere. Generally speaking

1. / means exactly http://localhost/
2. /* means http://localhost/<whatever>

the question must be a little bit refined, if you are configuring org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet a typical pattern should be *.do or you cannot access pure html page.