I tried Kai Sternad's solution but it seemed imperfect to me. There was a lot of special symbols left after the last awk from the deps tree itself.

So, I came up with my own modification of Kai Sternad's solution (with a little help from cashmere's idea):

npm ls -gp --depth=0 | awk -F/node_modules/ '{print $2}' | grep -vE '^(npm|)$' | xargs -r npm -g rm 

npm ls -gp --depth=0 lists all globally-installed npm modules in parsable format:

/home/leonid/local/lib /home/leonid/local/lib/node_modules/bower /home/leonid/local/lib/node_modules/coffee-script ... 

awk -F/node_modules/ '{print $2}' extracts module names from paths, forming the list of all globally-installed modules.

grep -vE '^(npm|)$' removes npm itself and blank lines.

xargs -r npm -g rm calls npm -g rm for each module in the list.

Like Kai Sternad's solution, it'll only work under *nix.

I tried Kai Sternad's solution but it seemed imperfect to me. There was a lot of special symbols left after the last awk from the deps tree itself.

So, I came up with my own modification of Kai Sternad's solution (with a little help from cashmere's idea):

npm ls -gp --depth=0 | awk -F/node_modules/ '{print $2}' | grep -vE '^(npm|)$' | xargs -r npm -g rm 

npm ls -gp --depth=0 lists all globally-installed npm modules in parsable format:

/home/leonid/local/lib /home/leonid/local/lib/node_modules/bower /home/leonid/local/lib/node_modules/coffee-script ... 

awk -F/node_modules/ '{print $2}' extracts module names from paths, forming the list of all globally-installed modules.

grep -vE '^(npm|)$' removes npm itself and blank lines.

xargs -r npm -g rm calls npm -g rm for each module in the list.

Like Kai Sternad's solution, it'll only work under *nix.

I tried Kai Sternad's solution but it seemed imperfect to me. There was a lot of special symbols left after the last awk from the deps tree itself.

So, I came up with my own modification of Kai Sternad's solution (with a little help from cashmere's idea):

npm ls -gp --depth=0 | awk -F/node_modules/ '{print $2}' | grep -vE '^(npm|)$' | xargs -r npm -g rm 

npm ls -gp --depth=0 lists all globally-installed npm modules in parsable format:

/home/leonid/local/lib /home/leonid/local/lib/node_modules/bower /home/leonid/local/lib/node_modules/coffee-script ... 

awk -F/node_modules/ '{print $2}' extracts module names from paths, forming the list of all globally-installed modules.

grep -vE '^(npm|)$' removes npm itself and blank lines.

xargs -r npm -g rm calls npm -g rm for each module in the list.

Like Kai Sternad's solution, it'll only work under *nix.

I tried Kai Sternad's solution but it seemed imperfect to me. There was a lot of special symbols left after the last awk from the deps tree itself.

So, I came up with my own modification of Kai Sternad's solution (with a little help from cashmere's idea):

npm ls -gp --depth=0 | awk -F/node_modules/ '{print $2}' | grep -vE '^(npm|)$' | xargs -r npm -g rm 

npm ls -gp --depth=0 lists all globally-installed npm modules in parsable format:

/home/leonid/local/lib /home/leonid/local/lib/node_modules/bower /home/leonid/local/lib/node_modules/coffee-script ... 

awk -F/node_modules/ '{print $2}' extracts module names from paths, forming the list of all globally-installed modules.

grep -vE '^(npm|)$' removes npm itself and blank lines.

xargs -r npm -g rm calls npm -g rm for each module in the list.

Like Kai Sternad's solution, it'll only work under *nix.

I tried Kai Sternad's solution but it seemed imperfect to me. There was a lot of special symbols left after the last awk from the deps tree itself.

So, I came up with my own modification of Kai Sternad's solution:

npm ls -g -p | grep -v node_modules.*node_modules | awk -F/node_modules/ '{print $2}' | grep -vE '^(npm|)$' | xargs npm -g rm 

npm ls -g -p lists all globally-installed npm modules in parseable format:

/home/leonid/local/lib /home/leonid/local/lib/node_modules/bower /home/leonid/local/lib/node_modules/bower/node_modules/abbrev ... 

grep -v node_modules.*node_modules removes all submodules from the list. Only top-level deps remains after it.

awk -F/node_modules/ '{print $2}' extracts module names from paths, forming the list of all globally-installed modules.

grep -vE '^(npm|)$' removes npm itself and blank lines.

xargs npm -g rm calls npm -g rm for each module in the list.

Like Kai Sternad's solution, it'll only work under *nix.

Update:

I used cashmere's idea to remove check for nested modules. It looks even simpler now:

npm ls -gp --depth=0 | awk -F/node_modules/ '{print $2}' | grep -vE '^(npm|)$' | xargs npm -g rm 

I tried Kai Sternad's solution but it seemed imperfect to me. There was a lot of special symbols left after the last awk from the deps tree itself.

So, I came up with my own modification of Kai Sternad's solution (with a little help from cashmere's idea):

npm ls -gp --depth=0 | awk -F/node_modules/ '{print $2}' | grep -vE '^(npm|)$' | xargs -r npm -g rm 

npm ls -gp --depth=0 lists all globally-installed npm modules in parsable format:

/home/leonid/local/lib /home/leonid/local/lib/node_modules/bower /home/leonid/local/lib/node_modules/coffee-script ... 

awk -F/node_modules/ '{print $2}' extracts module names from paths, forming the list of all globally-installed modules.

grep -vE '^(npm|)$' removes npm itself and blank lines.

xargs -r npm -g rm calls npm -g rm for each module in the list.

Like Kai Sternad's solution, it'll only work under *nix.