How to put wildcard entry into /etc/hosts?

Question

I recently wanted to point all subdomains for a test domain, let\'s say example.com to the localhost. Is there a way to point all requests on *.example.com to resolve to 127

Answer 1

Here is the configuration for those trying to accomplish the original goal (wildcards all pointing to same codebase -- install nothing, dev environment ie, XAMPP)

hosts file (add an entry)

file: /etc/hosts (non-windows)

127.0.0.1   example.local

httpd.conf configuration (enable vhosts)

file: /XAMPP/etc/httpd.conf

# Virtual hosts
Include etc/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

httpd-vhosts.conf configuration

file: XAMPP/etc/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

    ServerAdmin admin@example.local
    DocumentRoot "/path_to_XAMPP/htdocs"
    ServerName example.local
    ServerAlias *.example.local
#    SetEnv APP_ENVIRONMENT development
#    ErrorLog "logs/example.local-error_log"
#    CustomLog "logs/example.local-access_log" common

restart apache

create pac file:

save as whatever.pac wherever you want to and then load the file in the browser's network>proxy>auto_configuration settings (reload if you alter this)

function FindProxyForURL(url, host) {
  if (shExpMatch(host, "*example.local")) {
    return "PROXY example.local";
  }
  return "DIRECT";
}