Igor,

Thanks. My ultimate goal is to have the flexibility to inspect the incoming uri and make decisions as to what backend host to send the request to.

For instance,

I might want

Incoming URI /johndesp/([a-z] {1}) ----> proxy_pass http://host1/johndesp/whatever

Incoming URI /johndesp/([0-9] {1}) ----> proxy_pass http://host1/johndesp/whenever

example

/johndesp/b ---------------- proxy_pass http://host1:8080/johndesp/whatever * notice this is not http://host1:8080/johndesp/whatever/b

likewise I would want the following:

johndesp/5 ---------------- proxy_pass http://host2:8080/johndesp/whenever * notice this is not http://host1:8080/johndesp/whatever

I tried to use the following..however, I did not get the desired result:

location "~* ^/johndesp/whatever/([a-z] {1}"{
proxy_pass http://host1:8080/johndesp/whatever;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
proxy_redirect off;
}

but I get this error:
[emerg]: the using of the regex " ^/johndesp/whatever/([a-z] {1}" requires PCRE library in /usr/local/nginx/nginx.conf:43