[BUG] npx uses local package when another version is requested

[Maxim-Mazurok]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Current Behavior

I have prettier-plugin-packagejson installed (which has sort-package-json@1.51.0 as a dependency)

And trying to run npx sort-package-json@1.48 because I want to use version 1.48, before this tragic PR was merged

But npx picks up version 1.51.0 which is in my local deps, and in PATH. But it's the wrong version.

Expected Behavior

npx should make sure that it's running version 1.48, as requested.

Steps To Reproduce

1. Make sure sort-package-json is not installed globally (npm rm sort-package-json)
2. Make sure it's not in PATH: which sort-package-json should not return anything
3. Do npm init
4. Add these two scripts in package.json:

   "z": "should be last",
   "a": "should be first"
   

5. Do npm i prettier-plugin-packagejson
6. Run npx sort-package-json@1.48
7. Observe scripts still not sorted, because 1.51 was used (cat package.json, see "z" will be still before "a")

Optional:

8. Remove local deps: rm -rf ./node_modules/
9. Run npx sort-package-json@1.48 again
10. Observe scripts are now sorted because 1.48 was used (cat package.json, see "a" will be before "z")

Environment

• OS: Ubuntu 20 (WSL)
• Node: 16.7.0
• npm: 7.19.0

[lukekarrys]

Thanks for the thorough report @Maxim-Mazurok. I've confirmed this is also an issue on the latest npm v7.24.0. I believe this is a duplicate of #3210, so I'm going to close this and use that as the issue to track.