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I am trying to get npm to work. In the process, I seem to have two versions of it installed: A corrupt one installed in ~/bin, and another I just compiled and ran make install to put it in /usr/local/bin/npm.

So, I moved the entire ~/bin folder into ~/old/bin ... but still when I run npm the system searches in ~/bin:

$ which npm
/usr/local/bin/npm
$ alias npm
-bash: alias: npm: not found
$ npm
-bash: /home/ubuntu/bin/npm: No such file or directory
$ echo $PATH
/home/ubuntu/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
$

What causes Ubuntu to look for npm in ~/bin/npm ? I'm using Ubuntu 11.10. I don't know if the question is ubuntu-specific or not, it can be moved to askubuntu if needed.

I do see ~/bin in the PATH, but as far I as understand this only means that if npm was present at ~/bin then it would have used it ... but why does bash insist to look for it specifically there? Why doesn't it find /usr/local/bin/npm, even though the which command does find it?

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15

The executable's previously known location is likely hashed by the shell. Resetting the shell's cache with hash -r should fix the issue.

If you don't want to reset the entire cache, you can delete the individual entry for npm using hash -d npm.

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  • 1
    Excellent. Any reference to hash you can refer me to for further reading? Googling for linux hash does't seem to point me the right way. – ripper234 Mar 19 '12 at 11:24
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    @ripper234 - hash is a shell builtin command. The bash manpage holds more detail. – D_Bye Mar 19 '12 at 12:13
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    @ripper234 help hash also contains some good information. – Chris Down Mar 19 '12 at 12:45
  • Urk! I can't believe that in 2012 we are still using shells that require to be rehashed when the $PATH changes. I wonder if there is a bash option to require it to rehash at every command? – Norman Ramsey Mar 19 '12 at 17:56
  • @NormanRamsey - You could put hash -r in your $PROMPT_COMMAND I guess. – Chris Down Mar 19 '12 at 18:36

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