title: Why does npm try to compile a old version of my code?
body: <p>I'm totally new to npm and node.js so please forgive me if I'm not giving the right detail. I'm writing a plugin for a website that uses an out-of-the-box framework in npm. It was working fine as I coded away happily, but at some point it started trying to compile a file that no longer exists. </p>
  
  <p>I use <code>npm run start</code> to compile my html file (which contains all the javascript code as well) and get this error:</p>
  
  <hr>
  
  <pre><code>ℹ info Compiler will compile ./src/plugin.html
  ℹ info Transpiling with babel
   ✖ error Error
    SyntaxError: unknown: Unexpected token (555:3)
  
      553 | 
      554 | 
    &gt; 555 | });
          |    ^
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What breaks my brain is that this simple syntax error is not present in <code>./src/plugin.html</code> (I've quadruple checked this fact). This obvously pertains to an earlier version of the file. </p>
  
  <p>Does npm have some kind of cache that would cause it to compile an older version of a file? I've noticed that if I remove most of the code, it compiles again, but when I replace the code it breaks again. It seems that if the file is somewhat similar to its cached version, it tries to compile the cached version and not the current version. </p>
  
  <p>I've tried clearing the cache with <code>npm --force cache clear</code> but to no effect. </p>
  
  <p>Any suggestions?</p>