Nginx simple redirect of products from old to new category

I'm making redirects of products from old to new category.

I've managed to make it work with following rule:

rewrite ^/old-category/(.*) /new-category/$1;

But I want to know when should I use "end line" sign $ and what's the difference with it or without it in my case. For example:

rewrite ^/old-category/(.*)$ /new-category/$1;

Also I want to redirect users if they simply write old category name (without products), should I create a new rule just for category redirect or I can edit the current rule above to work in both cases.

Thank you for your answers in advance.

Solution 1:

Answering your questions in order...

This

rewrite ^/old-category/(.*) /new-category/$1;

and this

rewrite ^/old-category/(.*)$ /new-category/$1;

as written are equivalent. The .* rule matches 0 or more of "everything", so the $ is redundant/not really needed.

The $ terminator is useful when you want to match strings that end in a specific way, for example

rewrite ^/old-category/(.*)\.php$ /new-category/$1;

to rewrite only PHP files.

As for your second question, if I understood correctly, you want to redirect this

http://example.com/old-category/

to this

http://example.com/new-category/

If that's so, it's already done by the rewrite rule, as .* matches ZERO or more characters.