NPM not recognized as an internal or external command

[lukanp]

I’ve installed latest version of NodeJS and I'm trying to install Angular CLI , but...
When i try to use NPM commands i always get this message:
'CALL “C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules \npm\bin\npm-cli.js” prefix -g' is not recognized as an internal or external command

and then command is executed.Here's an image

and when I try to instal Angular cli with "npm install -g @angular/cli" this happens:

and Angular's not working

PS: here's my Environment Variables
USER:

SYSTEM:

I don't know what could be a problem. Please help me...
Thank you.

[lukanp]

@benoitcornette Hey, I saw your post about same problem (https://npm.community/t/npm-v-returns-error-message-perfix-g-is-not-recognized-as-an-internal-or-external-command/4820 ). I wonder if you had fixed it. I would appreciate you help very much. Thank you.

[mscdex]

How did you install node?

[DerekNonGeneric]

This confirms my suspicions in the footnotes of https://github.com/nodejs/modules/issues/472#issuecomment-615950402.

/cc @nodejs/modules-active-members as I was also experiencing this and discussion has begun about error messages in nodejs/node#32052

My questions is what team is responsible for module specifiers being fed to the node CLI as arguments? Specifically Windows absolute root paths and the associated translation to absolute file URL paths existing in context.url of the resolve hook?

[DerekNonGeneric]

I would very highly value the opinion of @weswigham on this seeing as how TypeScript has already done all this work for us.

[DerekNonGeneric]

Maybe @nodejs/tsc would know as I haven't a clue about the various compatibility expectations here.

[weswigham]

Our path normalization code, as far as the string representation is concerned:

• Replaces all \ with /
• Reduces or eliminates all . or .. components to a minimal set
• Preserves the trailing slash, if any

That's all.

We do not make a URL/Path distinction in our codebase - a Path may implicitly be a URL. To whit, in many places where we want to attempt to do local disk lookups, we call an isRootedDiskPath helper to check if a path is a / or c: (or similar) absolute path. The function getEncodedRootLength in path.ts is what performs the local path vs URL disambiguation for us. Do note, in addition to traditional POSIX paths, DOS paths, and URLs, it also disambiguates windows UNC paths. We have many helpers that answer questions about a path (is it absolute? is it rooted? is it local? what is the non-root part?) based on that disambiguation.

[benoitcornette]

@lukanp I just reinstalled my virtual machine completely and after that, everything worked perfectly.

[Hakerh400]

Related issues:

#1019
#1981
#2054
#2266
#2445

[mcollina]

I don't understand this issue. It seems this issue should be in help, but I might be wrong. Is there anything that we can do to prevent this from happening?

---

@DerekNonGeneric I do not understand the question to the tsc.

[mscdex]

This seems like two separate issues to me?

[bzoz]

@lukanp, from your system variables:

Are you running antivirus software? Can you try uninstalling it and reinstalling Node?

[Hakerh400]

@lukanp Looking at your environment variables, I think the problem is related to your ComSpec having semicolon at the end. I can reproduce both of your issues if I add semicolon. Try to remove the semicolon, then start a new command prompt and try to run NPM again.

[DerekNonGeneric]

/to @mcollina

@DerekNonGeneric I do not understand the question to the tsc.

Thanks for your reply! There was no question. :)

---

I don't understand this issue. [...]

There are problems on a few layers here. Judging by the title of the issue, the main concern seems to have been at the intersection of label:windows label:cli label:module.

---

Here's the full-text output of the error from my image (similar to OP's 3rd image):

C:\Users\Administrator>node /foo.mjs
internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1029
  throw new ERR_REQUIRE_ESM(filename);
  ^

Error [ERR_REQUIRE_ESM]: Must use import to load ES Module: C:\foo.mjs
�[90m    at Object.Module._extensions..mjs (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1029:9)�[39m
�[90m    at Module.load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:815:32)�[39m
�[90m    at Function.Module._load (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:727:14)�[39m
�[90m    at Function.Module.runMain (internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:1047:10)�[39m
�[90m    at internal/main/run_main_module.js:17:11�[39m {
  code: �[32m'ERR_REQUIRE_ESM'�[39m
}

Those escape sequences (�[90m and �[39m) are probably the most interesting part of this issue. They appear to represent ANSI escape sequences like the ones found in the following packages.

• ansi-escape-sequences
• ansi-colors

I hope that was helpful.

[Hakerh400]

Those escape sequences (�[90m" and �[39m) are probably the most interesting part of this issue.

That is a known issue and unrelated to the issue from OP.

I would suggest moving this to nodejs/help, as it seems to be a problem with environment variables configuration, especially if the OP can confirm that https://github.com/nodejs/node/issues/32952#issuecomment-617356737 is the cause.

[jonerer]

This may or may not be related, but importing absolute paths on windows is not supported by ESM: nodejs/node#31710 . Currently the fix would be to convert your path to a "absolute file specifier" by doing something like

import { pathToFileURL } from 'url';
const fileUrl = pathToFileURL('c:\\path\\to\\file.js').href;
import(fileUrl);

[DerekNonGeneric]

• OP's 1st image:
  • 1st command: no problem.
  • 2nd command: duplicate of prefix -g is not recognized as internal or external command #2266.
• OP's 2nd image:
  • 1st command: no problem.
  • 2nd command: duplicate of prefix -g is not recognized as internal or external command #2266.
  • 3rd command: duplicate of prefix -g is not recognized as internal or external command #2266.

/cc @addaleax as we now have a command associated w/ error message seen in #2266

[addaleax]

@DerekNonGeneric I don’t really know that I can add any value here besides that a) this does belong in nodejs/help and I’ll move it there and b) this is an issue with Windows and/or npm, but not Node.js itself, as far as I can tell

[lukanp]

I tried a lot of the things you recommended to me but nothing worked to fix the problem. In the end, I reinstalled my system and that's how I fixed it. Thank you for your support and advice!