Question

I have a collection I’m unable to drop, I’m assuming that the “-” in its name is a special character. In MongoDB, what is the best way to escape special characters?

> db.tweets.drop();
true

BUT

> db.tweets-old.drop();
ReferenceError: old is not defined (shell):1

I’ve tried to escape with quotes (both single and double) and a slash, but nothing works.

Answer 1

The following works:

db["tweets-old"].drop();

It’s called the square bracket notation, which allows you to use special characters in property names.