Question

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?

Answer 1

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