`react-native init AwesomeProject` throwing SyntaxError

Question

react-native init AwesomeProject is throwing SyntaxError: Unexpected token : and I\'m not sure why. I\'ve uninstalled and re-installed react-native-cli

Answer 1

Apparently the new version React Native 0.56.0 has this problem.

To fix this problem, you can install the previous version.

react-native init --version="0.55.0" MyNewApp

Answer 2

Update node version on OS.

sudo npm cache clean -f
sudo npm install -g n
sudo n stable

Answer 3

Looks like the error an update was published to react-native. Others are experiencing the same issue so I'm going to answer this and say it's a package issue. https://github.com/facebook/react-native/issues/11384

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Until this gets resolved, you can use rninit(https://www.npmjs.com/package/rninit) to install using the previous version of react-native. This worked for me:
rninit init mobile --source react-native@0.39.0