A location chooses what Nginx does with a path. A more specific-looking rule does not always win: exact matches, prefixes and regular expressions have different priorities.
These locations are siblings inside one server block:
location = /health { return 200 "health"; }
location /images/ { return 200 "images"; }
location ~ \.jpg$ { return 200 "jpg"; }
/health returns health: = means an exact match, which finishes the selection immediately./images/cat.png returns images: the prefix matches and the regular expression does not./images/cat.jpg returns jpg: the regular expression takes precedence over the ordinary prefix.Change location /images/ to location ^~ /images/. If this is the longest matching prefix, Nginx skips regular-expression checks at this level, so /images/cat.jpg now returns images.
For this flat configuration: exact match first; otherwise remember the longest prefix, then use the first matching regular expression unless ^~ prevents that check. Query parameters do not participate. Nested locations and internal redirects add selection steps, so test those separately.
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