Npm bs npx

[A062025]

Why in nodejs when we need to run script we do nom run dev but when we need to run the testing (jest or supertest ) we do npx jest
Why not node jest

[M677871]

node runs a file. npm run runs a named script from package.json. npx runs a package binary.

So:

npm run dev works because dev is usually a script alias, like "dev": "next dev"
npx jest works because jest is a CLI from node_modules/.bin

node jest usually does not work because jest is not a file path you are passing to Node. The closer equivalent would be something ugly like:

node ./node_modules/jest/bin/jest.js

In practice, for tests, npm test / npm run test is usually better than npx jest if Jest is already in your project.