zsh: permission denied when running from outside directory

Question

I have a package.json at:

/home/user/dev/project/package.json

If I navigate to this location:

cd /home/user/dev/project

Then run a command:

npm run compile

It works and there are no errors.

However, if I try to run the command like this

/home/user/dev/project/ npm run compile

I get a message:

zsh: permission denied: /home/user/dev/project/

Why is this happening? I have not changed the user I'm logged in as.

Answer 1

The first word of a command is the name of the program to run. The directory is not an executable program, so you get that error.

If you want to refer to a file in another directory, put the directory name in the filename:

npm run compile /home/user/dev/project