TS does not support resolving paths with colons

🔎 Search Terms

https://github.com/microsoft/TypeScript/issues?q=is%3Aissue+colon+exports+is%3Aclosed

colon, exports

🕗 Version & Regression Information

• This is the behavior in every version I tried

⏯ Playground Link

https://stackblitz.com/edit/stackblitz-starters-d2rfdx?description=Starter%20project%20for%20Node.js,%20a%20JavaScript%20runtime%20built%20on%20Chrome%27s%20V8%20JavaScript%20engine&file=package.json&title=node.new%20Starter

💻 Code

Consumer module:

import a from 'my-library';
import b from 'my-library/foo';
import c from 'my-library/foo:virtual';
import d from 'my-library/bar';
import e from 'my-library/colon:here';

console.log({ a, b, c, d, e });

package.json for my-library:

{
  "name": "my-library",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "type": "module",
  "exports": {
    ".": {
      "types": "./foo.d.ts",
      "default": "./foo.js"
    },
    "./foo": {
      "types": "./foo.d.ts",
      "import": "./foo.js"
    },
    "./foo:virtual": {
      "types": "./foo.d.ts",
      "default": "./foo.js"
    },
    "./*": {
      "types": "./*.d.ts",
      "default": "./*.js"
    }
  },
  "scripts": {
    "lint": "attw --pack; pnpm publint"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "@arethetypeswrong/cli": "^0.14.1",
    "publint": "^0.2.7"
  }
}

every imported module is supposed to resolve, and then print:

{ a: 2, b: 2, c: 2, d: 2, e: 'two' }

(pnpm start in the consumer package in the repro link shows this)

🙁 Actual behavior

Errors, cannot find module

🙂 Expected behavior

align with JS, resolve the module

Additional information about the issue

No response

Start with the StackBlitz repro and the consumer package's pnpm start, then inspect the shown package.json exports entries containing colons. Trace TypeScript's module-resolution behavior for these package subpaths and compare it with the JavaScript runtime result. Done means all five imports resolve and produce the expected output.