Equivalent to "dirname"

[merlin corey]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 12:59 PM, Pior Bastida <pior at mentel.com> wrote:
> On December 14, 2009 03:20:20 pm merlin corey wrote:
>> On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 12:09 PM, Pior Bastida <pior at pbastida.net> wrote:
>> > Hello,
>> >
>> > I would like to check if the directory of a non existant file exist.
>
>> The rewrite module provides a -d operator to the if directive which
>> will test for a directory existence; please see
>> http://wiki.nginx.org/NginxHttpRewriteModule#if .
>>
>> Alternatively, if you are going to end up using the index or some
>> value inside the directory if it exists, then you should consider
>> using the try_files directive documented here:
>> http://wiki.nginx.org/NginxHttpCoreModule#try_files .
>
> Thank you Merlin.
>
> I almost know all the wiki, including -d and try_files.
>
> Here is what I need to do :
>
>  1. try to server /poipoi/foobar
>  2. if the file doesn't exist, check if /poipoi/ exist
>  3. if this directory doesn't exist, return a redirect, otherwise return 404
>
> How can I get the base directory of $request_filename ?
>
> --
> Pior Bastida
> System Administrator
> Mentel Inc
> pior at mentel.com
>

Pior,

Sorry for confusion!  I don't think you can directly do what you want
do, in that there is no specific "dirname function" (there isn't even
a concept of a function in the nginx configuration language right
now).

That said you should be able to do what you want using regular
expression captures.  Something like the following might work for your
needs, but I have not tested it and I am the best with regex:

location ~ ^(.*)/(.*)$ {
  if (-d $1) {
    rewrite ^ http://otherplace;
  }
}

Thanks,
Merlin