Fixing npm whitespace issue with paths on Windows

I’ve been trying to use npx on Windows for a while now and everytime I got the following error:

TypeError: Cannot read property 'get' of undefined
    at errorHandler (C:\Users\User Name\scoop\persist\nodejs\bin\node_modules\npx\node_modules\npm\lib\utils\error-handler.js:213:18)
    at C:\Users\User Name\scoop\persist\nodejs\bin\node_modules\npx\node_modules\npm\bin\npm-cli.js:83:20            
    at cb (C:\Users\User Name\scoop\persist\nodejs\bin\node_modules\npx\node_modules\npm\lib\npm.js:215:22)
    at C:\Users\User Name\scoop\persist\nodejs\bin\node_modules\npx\node_modules\npm\lib\npm.js:253:24
    at C:\Users\User Name\scoop\persist\nodejs\bin\node_modules\npx\node_modules\npm\lib\config\core.js:81:7         
    at Array.forEach (<anonymous>)
    at C:\Users\User Name\scoop\persist\nodejs\bin\node_modules\npx\node_modules\npm\lib\config\core.js:80:13        
    at f (C:\Users\User Name\scoop\persist\nodejs\bin\node_modules\npx\node_modules\npm\node_modules\once\once.js:25:25)
    at afterExtras (C:\Users\User Name\scoop\persist\nodejs\bin\node_modules\npx\node_modules\npm\lib\config\core.js:178:20)
    at C:\Users\User Name\scoop\persist\nodejs\bin\node_modules\npx\node_modules\npm\node_modules\mkdirp\index.js:47:53
C:\Users\User Name\scoop\persist\nodejs\bin\node_modules\npx\node_modules\npm\lib\utils\error-handler.js:213
if (npm.config.get('json')) {
                 ^

TypeError: Cannot read property 'get' of undefined
    at process.errorHandler (C:\Users\User Name\scoop\persist\nodejs\bin\node_modules\npx\node_modules\npm\lib\utils\error-handler.js:213:18)
    at process.emit (events.js:210:5)
    at process._fatalException (internal/process/execution.js:150:25)
Install for [ 'package@latest' ] failed with code 7

Or some other variation of it, I think the error was that my User’s $HOME directory contained whitespace so to fixed it I had to set the cache and prefix keys in npm config, here’s how it can be fixed.

First, if you don’t already know where the npm cache and prefix directories are you can retrieve them using

npm config list -l

The output should look like the following:

Find the following keys: cache, prefix and userconfig, userconfig should be your .npmrc file edit or create it using your favorite editor and add the cache and prefix to it, replacing your username directory with the short version for me that would be USERNA~1.

To get the short name you can use this powershell command (replace $home with the directories you get).

(New-Object -ComObject Scripting.FileSystemObject).GetFolder("$home").ShortPath

If this doesn’t work try the other methods in this question.

Then add them to your .npmrc file, the final result should look something like:

cache = "C:\\Users\\USERNA~1\\scoop\\persist\\nodejs\\cache"
prefix = "C:\\Users\\USERNA~1\\scoop\\persist\\nodejs\\bin"

That’s all FOLKS~1