Today I typed node -e <string> to see what happened. Answer: it evaluated my
string argument.
Here’s an example; printing the milliseconds since epoch without leaving the shell:
> node -e "console.log(Date.now())"
1792427691395
Scripts that being with the minus symbol (-) are ambiguous, so you must add
the -p / --print flag.
> node --eval="-42" --print
-42
See man node for more.