NGINX rewrite/location regex redirect /index.html$ -> / -

i want maintain 1 single url pages , i'm using index index.html directive have page @ /writing/index.html displayed when visits /writing/. however, index directive /writing/index.html still valid url nginx serves page at.

i want /writing/index.html 301 redirect /writing/, , forth root path (/index.html -> /) , other urls (/foo/bar/index.html -> /foo/bar/).

i want use regular expression matches /index.html ending such as: ^(.*/)index\.html$

but if if add

  rewrite "^(.*)/index\.html$" $1 last; 

to nginx conf i'm seeing /writing/index.html 301 redirect /writing/ see /writing/ 301 redirect /writing/ in infinite loop.

so question why above rewrite regex match /writing/ when not end in index.html? because of internal index directive in nginx conf?

i've seen other 1 off solutions on stackoverflow redirecting single path, not solution in clean/generic way this.

below current nginx.conf

server {   listen         80;   server_name example.com *.example.com;    charset utf-8;    gzip on;   gzip_disable "msie6";    gzip_vary on;   gzip_proxied any;   gzip_comp_level 6;   gzip_buffers 16 8k;   gzip_http_version 1.1;   gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;    rewrite "^(.*/)index\.html$" $1 permanent;    location / {     root /srv/www/example.com/;     index index.html;   }    error_page 404 /404/; } 

so solution problem have rewrite inside location checks against actual request's $request_uri avoids internal re-routing index directive.

pretty use instead:

if ($request_uri ~ "^(.*/)index\.html$") {   rewrite "^(.*/)index\.html$" $1 permanent; }