Nginx HTTP Server - Fourth Edition

merge_slashes

Context: http, server, and location

Enabling this directive will have the effect of merging multiple consecutive slashes in a URI. It turns out to be particularly useful in situations resembling the following:

server { 
    [...] 
    server_name website.com; 
    location /documents/ { 
        type { } 
        default_type text/plain; 
   } 
}

By default, if the client attempts to access http://website.com//documents/ (note the // in the middle of the URI), Nginx will return a 404 Not Found HTTP error. If you enable this directive, the two slashes will be merged into one and the location pattern will be matched.

Syntax: on or off

Default value: off