Backbone routes: optional params in root not matching

Question

I'm trying to get GitHub-esque route matching through Backbone. This means that hits to /:userName should get caught last, after every other route has been checked. In my current setup my unit route gets triggered on all calls, is there a way to make it behave properly? Many thanks!

'use strict';

/**
 * Module dependencies
 */

var course = require('./views/course');
var unit = require('./views/unit');

/**
 * Routes
 */ 

var Router = Backbone.Router.extend({
  routes: {
    '(/)': 'course',
    '/:user/:course/:unit(/)': 'unit'
  },
  course: function() {
    course();
  },
  unit: function() {
    unit();
  }
});

/**
 * Init router
 */

var router = new Router();

/**
 * Options
 */

Backbone.history.start({
  pushState: true
});

Answer 1

It appears that if you make routes that start with a "/something", Backbone interprets them as "//something". So the solution was to remove all prepending slashes, now it works just fine.