Question

what is the difference between a Spring Security intercept-url pattern with path/** or path/*
I’ve seen some Spring security configurations that have the below, but I don’t understand the /* vs /**

Answer 1

The /** vs. /* is a pretty common thing in frameworks nowadays, and is generally referred to as Apache Ant Pathing or something similar. Basically, the difference between the 2 is that /** matches the entire directory tree, including subdirectories, where as /* only matches at the level it’s specified at.

For example, suppose you had the following files

Main.java
directory/Main.java

Then

/*.java

Would match Main.java, but not directory/Main.java, whereas

/**/*.java

would match both.

Obviously the principles applies exactly the same for urls in Spring Security, just seemed to a bit easier to illustrate it via file names in this case.