What is the difference between the following two Nginx regex patterns?
location ~* /v1/path1/(.*)/path3
and
location ~* /v1/path1/(.*?)/path3
The difference is the ? in the regex.
All I intend to do is match all paths in /v1/path1/*/path3. I tested both and they both seem to work.
The greediness of the capture. Both regular expressions will match the same strings, but the capture may be different in each case.
For example, the string /foo/v1/path1/bar/path3/path3 will match both locations.
In the first case, $1 equals bar/path3 because the capture is greedy and absorbs the first "path3" because there is another that satisfies the regular expression.
In the second case, $1 equals bar because the capture is not greedy and absorbs the minimum amount to text to satisfy the regular expression.
