Nginx - Meaning of the ~ (tilde) in the location block of the nginx.conf?

Question

What is the meaning of the tilde after the location block in the nginx configuration?

for example

location ~ ^/download/(.*)$ {
  alias /home/website/files/$1;
}

What is the difference between with and without the "~" ?

A google search for "nginx tilde" gives the answer as the first result... Basic Nginx Configuration – Linode Library library.linode.com/web-servers/nginx/configuration/basic‎ Jul 26, 2013 - When a location directive is followed by a tilde (~), nginx performs a regular expression match. These matches are always case-sensitive. — Drew Khoury, Mar 12, 2014 at 9:34

EEAA · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-26 18:15:28Z

86

The tilde instructs nginx to perform a case-sensitive regular expression match, instead of a straight string comparison.

More details in the docs.

user147594

answered Mar 12, 2014 at 4:51

EEAA

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3

Additionally, ~* modifier for case-insensitive reg exp matching and ^~ modifier to override possible matches elsewhere.
– Akseli Palén
Nov 20, 2020 at 18:51

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