What is the use case for NPM run? | Hacker News Reader

What is the use case for NPM run?

1 pointtipiirai4 comments

Why should I use `npm run`? I can do the same with `node my-script.js` — the script starts faster and I can see more clearly what I'm doing. I can see only benefits for not using npm run.

Same question obviously applies to pnpm and bun too.

Thanks!!

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I think it's used so you can easily run a command using the same environment other npm commands run under.

https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/v10/commands/npm-run-script

Which is to say... I think you can do everything the `npm run <foo>` command does from the command line, but it would require typing a lot more characters. You would have to do something like this to get what running `npm run` does automagically:

    NODE_PATH=./node_modules/.bin node -r ./node_modules/env foo.js

which is more characters to type than

    npm foo

The above command is indeed more characters, but I don't need to set the NODE_PATH on the current working directory. Also the `-r ./node_modules/env` is unnecessary.

btw: I'm not comparing npm run vs plain npm. I'm comparing npm run some/script.js vs node some/script.js

One rationale is this "You can reduce complex node-related shell scripts into simple one-liners".

But I can also do that with my own script and make the one-liner even simpler. ie `node deploy` is simpler than `npm run deploy`. I can even just run `deploy.js` with a shebang.

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