Can I use Regex in the URL Redirect section in Magentos backend?

Question

Can I use Regex in the URL Redirect section in Magentos backend? Or any wildcards?

Thanks

Answer 1

From what I know you cannot do that.
The rewrites are processed in Mage_Core_Model_Url_Rewrite::rewrite method.
I didn't find anything in there that could handle a regex.
To simplify what that method does: It takes the current url, checks if there is a record in the core_url_rewrite table with the request_path matching the current url and redirects (in browser or internally) to the target_path then restarts the process until there is no matching value in that table or until you reach 100 redirects.
If you don't reach 100 redirects, the last url you get as a target path is handled by the rest of the routers: it checks if the url key matches any cms page identifier or it maps to this format module/controller/action.

But I think you can write you own router that can handle regex.
Inchoo provides (as always) a great tutorial on how to create your own router