Why is __dirname not defined in node REPL?

Question

From the node manual I see that I can get the directory of a file with __dirname, but from the REPL this seems to be undefined. Is this a misunderstanding on my

Answer 1

If you are using Node.js modules, __dirname and __filename don't exist.

From the Node.js documentation:

No require, exports, module.exports, __filename, __dirname

These CommonJS variables are not available in ES modules.

require can be imported into an ES module using module.createRequire().

Equivalents of __filename and __dirname can be created inside of each file via import.meta.url:

import { fileURLToPath } from 'url';
import { dirname } from 'path';

const __filename = fileURLToPath(import.meta.url);
const __dirname = dirname(__filename);

https://nodejs.org/api/esm.html#esm_no_require_exports_module_exports_filename_dirname