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What is the equals sign followed by tilde in lighttpd config (=~)?

What is the difference between the following? Both work the same way from what I can tell/use it for

$HTTP["host"] =~ "a.domain.com" {
    server.document-root = "/var/www/a/"
}

$HTTP["host"] == "a.domain.com" {
    server.document-root = "/var/www/a/"
}

Would the =~ match x.a.domain.com?

Solution

  • The right-hand side of =~ is a regular expression.

    x.a.domain.com would not match the regular expression a.domain.com.

    Examples that would match:

    • axdomain.com
    • axdomainxcom
    • aydomainycom
    • a1domain1com
    • ...

    Is the example from a real-world example? It seems kinda pointless.

    Something like this could be more meaningful:

    $HTTP["host"] =~ ".*\.somedomain\.com" {
    server.document-root = "/var/www/somedomain.com/"
}

    Meaning, serve all requests to *.somedomain.com from /var/www/somedomain.com/

    This page has some more realistic examples with regex matching:

    http://redmine.lighttpd.net/boards/2/topics/2518