Why is dirname not defined in node REPL

Question

From the node manual I see that I can get the directory of a file with   dirname  but from the REPL this seems to be undefined  Is this a misunderstanding on my side or where is the error     node  gt  console log   dirname  ReferenceError    dirname is not defined     at repl 1 14     at REPLServer eval  repl js 80 21      at Interface  lt anonymous gt   repl js 182 12      at Interface emit  events js 67 17      at Interface  onLine  readline js 162 10      at Interface  line  readline js 426 8      at Interface  ttyWrite  readline js 603 14      at ReadStream  lt anonymous gt   readline js 82 12      at ReadStream emit  events js 88 20      at ReadStream  emitKey  tty js 320 10

User · Answer

If you are using Node js modules    dirname and   filename don t exist  From the Node js documentation   No require  exports  module exports    filename    dirname These CommonJS variables are not available in ES modules  require can be imported into an ES module using module createRequire    Equivalents of   filename and   dirname can be created inside of each file via import meta url   import   fileURLToPath   from  url   import   dirname   from  path    const   filename   fileURLToPath import meta url   const   dirname   dirname   filename    https   nodejs org docs latest-v15 x api esm html esm no filename or dirname

User · Answer

Seems like you could also do this     dirname fs realpathSync         of course  dont forget fs require  fs     it s not really global in node scripts exactly  its just defined on the module level

User · Answer

If you got node   dirname not defined with node --experimental-modules  you can do   const   dirname   path dirname import meta url                         replace   file                 can be usefull  Because othe example  work only with current pwd directory not other directory

User · Answer

In ES6 use   import path from  path   const   dirname   path resolve      also available when node is called with --experimental-modules

User · Answer

I was also trying to join my path using path join   dirname   access log   but it was throwing the same error   Here is how I fixed it   I first imported the path package and declared a variable named   dirname  then called the resolve path method   In CommonJS  var path   require  path     var   dirname   path resolve      In ES6   import path  from  path    const   dirname   path resolve      Happy coding

User · Answer

dirname is only defined in scripts  It s not available in REPL   try make a script a js  console log   dirname     and run it   node a js   you will see   dirname printed   Added background explanation    dirname means  The directory of this script    In REPL  you don t have a script   Hence    dirname would not have any real meaning

User · Answer

I was running a script from batch file as SYSTEM user and all variables like process cwd     path resolve   and all other methods would give me path to C  Windows System32 folder instead of actual path  During experiments I noticed that when an error is thrown the stack contains a true path to the node file    Here s a very hacky way to get true path by triggering an error and extracting path from e stack  Do not use      this should be the name of currently executed file const currentFilename    index js    function veryHackyGetFolder       try       throw new Error        catch e        const fullMsg   e stack toString        const beginning   fullMsg indexOf  file         8      const end   fullMsg indexOf        currentFilename       const dir   fullMsg substr beginning  end - beginning  replace     g             return dir          Usage  const dir   veryHackyGetFolder

User · Answer

Though its not the solution to this problem I would like to add it as it may help others   You should have two underscores before dirname  not one underscore    dirname not  dirname    NodeJS Docs

User · Answer

Building on the existing answers here  you could define this in your REPL     dirname   path resolve path dirname         Or     dirname   path resolve         If no path segments are passed  path resolve   will return the absolute path of the current working directory      Or  Jthorpe s alternatives     dirname   process cwd      dirname   fs realpathSync         dirname   process env PWD

User · Answer

As  qiao said  you can t use   dirname in the node repl  However  if you need need this value in the console  you can use path resolve   or path dirname    Although  path dirname   will just give you a     so  probably not that helpful  Be sure to require  path

[node.js] Why is __dirname not defined in node REPL?

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