I do not understand the purpose of using "/" when requiring a package in Nodejs. For example for loading the Microsoft / Contributors Node V8 Driver for Node.js for SQL Server it needs to be required like this as per the documentation:
const sql = require('mssql/msnodesqlv8');
But these are two different node modules. What is the above require doing?
In your case, require is just importing a specific file. mssql/msnodesqlv8 means require msnodesqlv8 from mssql package. File is here https://github.com/tediousjs/node-mssql/blob/master/msnodesqlv8.js
On the other hand, everything before the / can be the package scope. When someone publishes a package, they need to give it a name, the package can be either user-scoped or organization-scoped. This helps to create a package with the same name as a package created by another user or organization without conflict.
More info:
I am not sure if scopes require a @ character though.
You can dive it from the document step by step:
This driver is not part of the default package and must be installed separately by npm install msnodesqlv8@^2
msnodesqlv8 is a driver, but to use this driver:To use this driver, use this require syntax: const sql = require('mssql/msnodesqlv8').
module.exports = require('./lib/msnodesqlv8')
const base = require('../base')
const ConnectionPool = require('./connection-pool')
const Transaction = require('./transaction')
const Request = require('./request')
msnodesqlv8 package:const msnodesql = require('msnodesqlv8')
... ...
require('msnodesqlv8') will lookup and use the package you just installed.It's like a chain, you grab the start(mssql/msnodesqlv8), but you got the end(msnodesqlv8) finally, the have similar names, but have different means.
