Restrict access to part of path in Nginx

So, I have a site, let’s call it example.com. But I have multiple levels of directories under it. I have directories like /example.com/repositories and the actual repositories at the next level like so example.com/repositories/abcd or example.com/repositories/efgh.

Now, I only want access to example.com/repositories restricted. Everyone should be able to access the root level i.e. example.com and the nested subdirectories i.e. example.com/repositories/*.

The way to go about doing this is –

location ~^/repositories/?$ {
  deny all;
  return 404;
}

location ~^/repositories/.+ {
  ...
  remaining configuration
  ...
}

The first section restricts access to both example.com/repositories as well as example.com/repositories/ (because ? allows an optional / at the end)

location ~^/repositories/?$ {
  deny all;
  return 404;
}

The second section ensures example.com/repositories/anything remains accessible.

location ~^/repositories/.+ {
  ...
  remaining configuration
  ...
}