Ionic "Error with start undefined" after python3

Question

When I run ionic start helloWorld blank, I receive the following error:

Error with start undefined
Error Initializing app: There was an error with the spawned command: npminstall

The above command worked without error when I tried it last(a few months ago). Now I've tried updating ionic, but still same error.

I had recently used Anaconda to get python3. So I'm afraid this might be related to that. I tried an alias (suggested here) but still getting the same error.

I've tried downgrading via anaconda, with

conda install python=2.7.3

but still getting the same error from ionic.

Running ionic info provides the following output:

Cordova CLI: 6.5.0 
Ionic CLI Version: 2.2.3
Ionic App Lib Version: 2.2.1
ios-deploy version: 1.9.0 
ios-sim version: 5.0.8 
OS: macOS
Node Version: v9.4.0
Xcode version: Xcode 9.4.1 Build version 9F2000

Running npm -v shows 5.6.0.

Answer 1

Turns out I still needed to do this after downgrading to 2.7

npm config set python $(which python)