The container will try to find an exact match of the path of the request to the path of the servlet. A successful match selects the servlet.

The container will recursively try to match the longest path-prefix. This is done by stepping down the path tree a directory at a time, using the / character as a path separator. The longest match determines the servlet selected.

If the last segment in the URL path contains an extension (e.g. .jsp ), the servlet container will try to match a servlet that handles requests for the extension. An extension is defined as the part of the last segment after the last . character.