OK, let’s talk about this “*” thing I messed around with today. It was a bit of a headache, but I finally got it working, so I figured I’d share my experience, just in case anyone else runs into the same issues.
First off, I needed to get * and npm on my machine. That wasn’t too bad, just downloaded the installer from their website and followed the steps. Once that was done, I opened up my terminal and tried installing this “*” thing globally using npm install -g *. Seemed to work fine, no errors or anything.
Next, I wanted to actually use it. The idea is, you just type in your terminal and it’s supposed to do some magic. But when I tried that, nothing happened! Well, not exactly nothing. I got this weird error message about something not being recognized as a command. What the hell? I just installed it!
So, I started digging around online, looking for answers. Turns out, it’s a pretty common problem. The issue is that when you install stuff globally with npm, it doesn’t always add it to your system’s PATH. Think of the PATH as a list of places your computer looks for commands when you type them in. If “*” isn’t in one of those places, your computer just shrugs and says, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Finding the Global Node Modules Folder
- First I need to find out where npm puts its global packages.
- I typed npm config get prefix into my terminal.
- This showed me the directory where global packages are installed.
Adding to PATH
- Then came the tricky part: adding that directory to my PATH.
- The exact steps depend on your operating system.
- Since I’m on Windows, I had to go into my system environment variables and edit the PATH variable there.
- I just added a new entry with the directory I got from the npm config get prefix command.
After I did all that, I closed my terminal and opened it again (gotta refresh things for the changes to take effect). And guess what? I typed and it worked! No more error message. It actually ran and did what it was supposed to do.
So yeah, that was my adventure with “*”. A bit of a pain in the neck to set up, but once you get past that PATH issue, it’s pretty smooth sailing. Hopefully, this little write-up will save someone else the headache I went through. If you’re trying to use “*” and it’s not working, double-check your PATH! That’s probably the culprit.
