How would I get the path to the script in Node.js?
I know there's process.cwd
, but that only refers to the directory where the script was called, not of the script itself. For instance, say I'm in /home/kyle/
and I run the following command:
node /home/kyle/some/dir/file.js
If I call process.cwd()
, I get /home/kyle/
, not /home/kyle/some/dir/
. Is there a way to get that directory?
I found it after looking through the documentation again. What I was looking for were the __filename
and __dirname
module-level variables.
__filename
is the file name of the current module. This is the resolved absolute path of the current module file. (ex:/home/kyle/some/dir/file.js
)__dirname
is the directory name of the current module. (ex:/home/kyle/some/dir
)UPDATE: If your are working with ES Modules
, i.e. if you are using "type":"module"
in your package.json
, starting with Node.js 20.11 / 21.2, you can use import.meta.dirname
and import.meta.filename
:
console.log(import.meta.filename);
console.log(import.meta.dirname);