exec vs execFile nodeJs

There is a difference between using child_process.exec() and child_process.execFile() in that the latter won't spawn a shell whereas the former will.

Nodejs documentation states:

On Windows, however, .bat and .cmd files are not executable on their own without a terminal, and therefore cannot be launched using child_process.execFile(). When running on Windows, .bat and .cmd files can be invoked using child_process.spawn() with the shell option set, with child_process.exec(), or by spawning cmd.exe and passing the .bat or .cmd file as an argument (which is what the shell option and child_process.exec() do).

I could launch them... though not without problem.

My observations:

• Running the following child_process.execFile('ls', ...) works on Linux whereas child_process.execFile('dir', ...) doesn't work on Windows.
• specifying the fullpath to the protractor executable on Windows, e.g. child_process.execFile('C:\\Users\\Jperl\\AppData\\Roaming\\npm\\protractor.cmd', ...) works as expected! No shell means we don't have access to the path variable.

Don't use execFile for Windows at all. Instead use either spawn or exec:

var protractor = child_process.spawn('protractor', ['./src/convertedJs/tempProtractorconfig.js'], {shell: true}); 

or

var protractor = child_process.spawn('cmd', ['/c', 'protractor', './src/convertedJs/tempProtractorconfig.js']); 

in nodejs v9.5.0, the exec is defined as below in file lib/child_process.js

exports.exec = function(command /*, options, callback*/) { var opts = normalizeExecArgs.apply(null, arguments); return exports.execFile(opts.file, opts.options, opts.callback); }; 

that means ,finally exec call execFile to excute your command , so in your case it quite strange that execFile fail but exec is not

I also faced some issue to start a node process by using "node myfile.js",but when I added the location of the node.exe like 'path of node.exe/node.exe myfile.js ' it was working fine like I expected