Why rewrite directive causes "301 Moved Permanently" with Nginx? - redirect

Question

Below is a much simplified version of what I have in the configuration file of a server run by Nginx 1.2.5, yet it causes 301 Moved Permanently with Location: http://example.com/phpmyadmin/ before serving data, which is not what I expected from the default behavior of the rewrite directive.
server {
listen 80;
location /pma {
rewrite ^ /phpmyadmin;
}
location /phpmyadmin {
root /var/www;
index Documentation.html;
}
}
When I go to http://example.com/pma in a browser, the data is served but the URL in the address bar changes to http://example.com/phpmyadmin/ while it was supposed to stay http://example.com/pma.
How do I avoid Nginx sending 301 Moved Permanently so that it doesn't expose the actual directory structure on my server?

Answer 1

Try alias:
server {
listen 80;
location /pma {
alias /phpmyadmin;
}
location /phpmyadmin {
root /var/www;
index Documentation.html;
}

Answer 2

I think that you need to use alias instead of rewrite. Rewrite creates a "new" URL, so it makes a redirect
server {
listen 80;
location /pma {
alias /var/www/phpmyadmin;
index Documentation.html;
}
location /phpmyadmin {
root /var/www;
index Documentation.html;
}
}