Run a few commands; testing the commands

Now that you've installed Node, we want to do two things; verify that the installation was successful, and familiarize you with the command-line tools.

Node's command-line tools

The basic install of Node includes two commands, node and node-waf. We've already seen node in action. It's used either for running command-line scripts or server processes. The other, node-waf, is a build tool for Node native extensions. Since it's for building native extensions, we will not cover it in this book and you should consult the online documentation at nodejs.org.

The easiest way to verify whether your Node installation works is also the best way to get help with Node. Type the following:

$ node –-help
Usage: node [options] [ -e script | script.js ] [arguments]
       node debug script.js [arguments]

Options:
  -v, --version        print node's version
  -e, --eval script    evaluate script
  -p, --print          print result of --eval
  -i, --interactive    always...