Why does the "SyntaxError: Unexpected ID" error occur when I use the Node.js interactive window in Visual Studio 2017?
I am new to Node.js and npm and I am trying to set up a JavaScript development environment in Visual Studio 2017. I downloaded and installed the latest recommended version of Node.js (currently v6. 11.1).
On the command line, I have verified that my Node.js path is configured correctly and that I am pointing to the expected version. To do this, I ran:
node -v
and as expected I returned:
v6.11.1
I've also configured Visual Studio to use this version. To do this, I went to Tools> Options, added the root Node.js folder to my list of external web tools, and moved the path to the top of the list as shown in the following screenshot.
I have verified that the Visual Studio toolkit is actually using this version by modifying the package.json file and checking that the packages are downloaded. Here is a screenshot showing that:
I also launched a Node.js interactive window directly from my node project as shown in the screenshot below:
But when I try to run the npm command from an interactive window, I get a "SyntaxError: Unexpected identifier" error like below:
So my question is, why am I getting the "SyntaxError: Unexpected identifier" error?
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Once I finished this question, I was able to speak to a colleague who said he was facing the same problem. For some strange reason (some of you may be commenting on this), the npm command must be prefixed with a period like this:
.npm install -g nsp
I find this completely unintuitive, but it solved my problem. Hope this helps someone else.
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