Debugging current file in VS Code

Question

I am writing javascript and am currently doing simple exercises/programs. At times, I wish to run my file for testing purposes. I am aware I could create an HTML file and do this within the console. In Sublime, there exists a way to "build" the current file and immediately see the results (say, whatever is sent to console.log).

With VS Code, it seems that for every file I want to "build"/debug in this manner, I must manually change the launch.json file to reflect the name of the current program.

I have been researching a way around this, and I learned that there are variables like ${file} , but when I use that in the launch.json "program" attribute, for example:

"program": "${workspaceRoot}/${file}"

with or without the workspaceRoot part, I get the following error:

Attribute "program" does not exist" (file name here). 

Am I missing a simple way to accomplish this, or must I keep editing launch.json every time I want to run the file?

Thanks in advance!

Solution 1

Change to:

"program": "${file}"

Solution 2

For reference this is the full launch.json

{
  "launch": {
    "version": "0.2.0",
    "configurations": [
      {
        "name": "Node.js - Debug Current File",
        "type": "node",
        "request": "launch",
        "program": "${file}"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Solution 3

For a single file, you can skip the launch.json file entirely. Just click the green arrow in the debugger panel and choose Node as your environment.

From here.