Windows 10 -> 'npx create-react-app myapp' command does not work because of whitespace username in file path

I ran into some issues when trying to install a react app on my Windows 10 via npx create-react-app appname, receiving the following error message:

Error: EPERM: operation not permitted, mkdir 'C:\Users\Daniel'
TypeError: Cannot read property 'loaded' of undefined
    at exit (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\lib\utils\error-handler.js:98:27)
    at errorHandler (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\lib\utils\error-handler.js:216:3)
    at C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\bin\npm-cli.js:77:20
    at cb (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\lib\npm.js:225:22)
    at C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\lib\npm.js:263:24
    at C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\lib\config\core.js:83:7
    at Array.forEach (<anonymous>)
    at C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\lib\config\core.js:82:13
    at f (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\node_modules\once\once.js:25:25)
    at afterExtras (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\lib\config\core.js:173:20)
C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\lib\utils\error-handler.js:98
  var doExit = npm.config.loaded ? npm.config.get('_exit') : true
                          ^

TypeError: Cannot read property 'loaded' of undefined
    at exit (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\lib\utils\error-handler.js:98:27)
    at process.errorHandler (C:\Program Files\nodejs\node_modules\npm\lib\utils\error-handler.js:216:3)
    at process.emit (events.js:198:13)
    at process._fatalException (internal/bootstrap/node.js:496:27)
Install for create-react-app@latest failed with code 7

Solution:

I started some research and finally found out, that this issue emerges if your Windows Username has a whitespace included e.g. "C:\Users\Firstname Lastname\AppData\Roaming\npm-cache"

After some tedious hours of running in circles and re-reading multiple GitHub-threads on this issue, I finally found a patch, that worked for me: run npm config set cache "C:\Users\Firstname~1\AppData\Roaming\npm-cache" --global from your terminal, it will replace the whitespace and everything after it with ~1, which seems to solve the issue

The source, where I found this solution is https://github.com/zkat/npx/issues/146#issuecomment-384019497

I am posting this comment here in order to save anyone the chore of working through the gazillions of circularly linked github threads.

SOLUTION

if you want to use current path that has space in username "C:\Users\Firstname Lastname\AppData\Roaming\npm-cache" you can replace the string after space with "~1"

npm config set cache "C:\Users\Firstname~1\AppData\Roaming\npm-cache" --global