Issue solved!

I followed Maxim's advice and compiled embedded perl in. However, I found the configuration not as trivial as Maxim claimed: embedded perl documentation is scarce and examples are rare.

The following configuration solved it for me and it may serve as an example for others of using the map module together with embedded perl:
[code]
http {
...

# use the map module to include a list with keys and corresponding article-ids
map $uri $old-class-url {
include /etc/nginx/rewrites/old-class-urls.txt; # (see the first post for a sample of the contents)
}

# lower case uri's file name part and remove dashes with perl. Return result to nginx variable $old_uri
perl_set $old_uri 'sub {
my $r = shift;
my $uri = $r->uri;
if($uri =~ /\/([^\/]+)\.htm$/) {
$uri = lc($1);
$uri =~ s/-//g;
}
return $uri;
}';
...
server {
...
location ~* ^/News/Articlepage-News/.*htm$ {
# rewrite $uri to variable $old_uri
rewrite ^ $old_uri ;
# return the article-id in the rewrite if $uri appears in the map
if ($old-class-url) {
rewrite ^ /old-class-url.php?articleid=$old-class-url permanent;
}
}
...
}
}
[/code]

I welcome any suggestion for a simpler solution.

Bart Schipper