thanks for insisting. i thought we get some unexpected exception, but actually it works all fine. the only point where it matters is when adding to the route collection. getting just takes the string and does not validate any pattern. https://github.com/symfony/symfony/blob/2.1/src/Symfony/Component/Routing/RouteCollection.php#L116 versus https://github.com/symfony/symfony/blob/2.1/src/Symfony/Component/Routing/RouteCollection.php#L153