Installing Babel command line and playing with ES6

If you would like to play with ECMAScript6, you can install Babel CLI globally on your machine and run the babel-node command. babel-node is a version of the Node.js executable that understands ES6. It can be installed with the package manager NPM. Installation instructions are listed below.

1) Install two Node.js modules babel and babel-cli one after another. Note: if you have some troubles during installation, update your Node.js and NPM to the latest stable versions.

npm install --global babel
npm install --global babel-cli

2) Install a set of plugins for available ES6 (ES2015) features. Without these plugins you will get errors about unexpected token or similar. See http://babeljs.io/docs/plugins/preset-es2015/ for more details about supported ES6 features.

npm install --global babel-preset-es2015

3a) Start interactive REPL and type ES6 code. Note: globally installed modules on Windows are located under C:\Users\<Username>\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules, so that we need to put a complete path to them.

babel-node --presets C:\\Users\\Oleg\\AppData\\Roaming\\npm\\node_modules\\babel-preset-es2015
> let arr = [1,2,3]
> arr.map(x => x * x)
Output: [1,4,9]

3b) Alternative, you can place some ES6 code into a file, e.g. testes6.js, and let it run.

babel-node --presets C:\\Users\\Oleg\\AppData\\Roaming\\npm\\node_modules\\babel-preset-es2015 testes6.js
Output: [1,4,9]

In the example, babel-node is executed in the same directory where the file testes6.js is located.

Enjoy.