[node.js] npm install vs. update - what's the difference?

Many distinctions have already been mentioned. Here is one more:

Running npm install at the top of your source directory will run various scripts: prepublish, preinstall, install, postinstall. Depending on what these scripts do, a npm install may do considerably more work than just installing dependencies.

I've just had a use case where prepublish would call make and the Makefile was designed to fetch dependencies if the package.json got updated. Calling npm install from within the Makefile would have lead to an infinite recursion, while calling npm update worked just fine, installing all dependencies so that the build could proceed even if make was called directly.

Examples related to node.js

Hide Signs that Meteor.js was Used Querying date field in MongoDB with Mongoose SyntaxError: Cannot use import statement outside a module Server Discovery And Monitoring engine is deprecated How to fix ReferenceError: primordials is not defined in node UnhandledPromiseRejectionWarning: This error originated either by throwing inside of an async function without a catch block dyld: Library not loaded: /usr/local/opt/icu4c/lib/libicui18n.62.dylib error running php after installing node with brew on Mac internal/modules/cjs/loader.js:582 throw err DeprecationWarning: Buffer() is deprecated due to security and usability issues when I move my script to another server Please run `npm cache clean`

Examples related to npm

What does 'x packages are looking for funding' mean when running `npm install`? error: This is probably not a problem with npm. There is likely additional logging output above Module not found: Error: Can't resolve 'core-js/es6' Browserslist: caniuse-lite is outdated. Please run next command `npm update caniuse-lite browserslist` ERROR in The Angular Compiler requires TypeScript >=3.1.1 and <3.2.0 but 3.2.1 was found instead DeprecationWarning: Buffer() is deprecated due to security and usability issues when I move my script to another server Please run `npm cache clean` What exactly is the 'react-scripts start' command? On npm install: Unhandled rejection Error: EACCES: permission denied Difference between npx and npm?