npm throws error without sudo

Question

I just installed node and npm through the package on nodejs.org and whenever I try to search or install something with npm it throws the following error, unless I sudo the c

Answer 1

Best solution would be this which is provided by npm documentation.

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For Ubuntu suggested solution is Option#2

Brief steps:
Make a directory for global installations:
mkdir ~/.npm-global

Configure npm to use the new directory path:
npm config set prefix '~/.npm-global'
npm config get prefix can help you to verify if prefix was updated or not. The result would be /.npm-global

Open or create a ~/.profile file and add this line:
export PATH=~/.npm-global/bin:$PATH

Back on the command line, update your system variables:
source ~/.profile

Instead of steps 2-4 you can also use the corresponding ENV variable (e.g. if you don't want to modify ~/.profile):

NPM_CONFIG_PREFIX=~/.npm-global

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For Mac suggested solution is Option#3

On Mac OS you can avoid this problem altogether by using the Homebrew package manager

brew install node