Unable to uninstall express in Ubuntu 13.x - node.js

Question

I have express installed, but it no longer works. When I type 'express' in the terminal I get:
bash: /usr/local/bin/express: No such file or directory
If I try and uninstall I get...
sudo npm uninstall –g express
npm WARN uninstall not installed in /home/user/expressApps/sausage/node_modules: "–g"
npm WARN uninstall not installed in /home/user/expressApps/sausage/node_modules: "express"
Or if I try and re-install I get...
sudo npm install –g express
npm WARN package.json application-name#0.0.1 No README.md file found!
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/express/3.12.1
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/%E2%80%93g
npm http 404 https://registry.npmjs.org/%E2%80%93g
npm ERR! 404 '%E2%80%93g' is not in the npm registry.
npm ERR! 404 You should bug the author to publish it
npm ERR! 404
npm ERR! 404 Note that you can also install from a
npm ERR! 404 tarball, folder, or http url, or git url.
npm ERR! System Linux 3.11.0-24-generic
npm ERR! command "/usr/bin/nodejs" "/usr/bin/npm" "install" "–g" "express"
npm ERR! cwd /home/johnmlocklear/expressApps/sausage
npm ERR! node -v v0.10.15
npm ERR! npm -v 1.2.18
npm ERR! code E404
npm http 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/express/3.12.1
npm ERR!
npm ERR! Additional logging details can be found in:
npm ERR! /home/johnmlocklear/expressApps/sausage/npm-debug.log
npm ERR! not ok code 0
How can I get express working again?

Answer 1

So I think my issue was that I had installed express from the apt-get repo using
sudo apt-get install express
Then after that at some point I also had installed from npm. To clean all this up I ran
sudo apt-get uninstall express
...and I also went into ~/.npm and removed both express and express-genrator folders. I then ran both...
sudo npm install -g express
sudo npm install -g express-generator
...and all seems to working OK now.

Answer 2

The big clues to me are in these error lines:
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/%E2%80%93g
npm http 404 https://registry.npmjs.org/%E2%80%93g
npm ERR! 404 '%E2%80%93g' is not in the npm registry.
That %E2%80%93g (note the g at the end) seems crazy. And it seels to be directly connected to this line:
sudo npm install –g express
That – next to the g is not a simple dash but some UTF-8 character that has been url encoded. Pretty sure that is an en-dash since a url encoded %E2%80%93 equals e28093 in hex as shown here. That most likely came from a copy & paste out of a text editor that somehow automatically sets simple dashes to en-dashed. Be careful of stuff like that when storing code & cheats heats.
To fix it, run the command with a real dash - like this:
sudo npm install -g express
The other issue I see is this:
bash: /usr/local/bin/express: No such file or directory
So where is that /usr/local/bin/express coming from? If express wasn’t in your path then you wouldn’t even get a full-path message like that? Is that a bash alias in your profile? If you set that yourself, I would highly recommend just adding /usr/local/bin/ to your shell path instead of setting an alias.