I still cant seem to get this working. I upgraded my PCRE libraries and recompiled/reinstalled a fresh nginx 1.0.12

# pcrecheck
PCRE version 8.21 2011-12-12

Here is my server sections. Notice I have 2 server sections...the 1st section catches the WWW site and redirects it to the 2nd, non-www...right? I'm still getting:
nginx: [emerg] unknown "domain" variable

server {
listen 80;
server_name ^~www\.(?<domain>.*)$;
return 301 http://$domain;
}

server {
listen 80;
server_name ^~(?<domain_name>[^\.]*)\.(?<tld>[^\.]*)$;
location / {
proxy_pass http://websites;
}
}

When I try it with the P, everything (www and nonwww) get a white 301 nginx page:
server {
listen 80;
server_name ^~www\.(?P<domain>.*)$;
return 301
$scheme://$domain$request_uri;;
}

server {
listen 80;
server_name _;
location / {
proxy_pass http://websites;
}
}

I tried making server_name in the 2nd block:
server_name ^~(?P<domain_name>[^\.]*)\.(?<tld>[^\.]*)$;

but I get this:
nginx: [emerg] invalid server name or wildcard "^~(?p<domain_name>[^\.]*)\.(?<tld>[^\.]*)$" on 0.0.0.0:80
(fyi, the error has a lowercase p, server_name has it capitalized)

Is there some other dependency I'm missing or am I just mangling the syntax?

thanks,
altimage