MongoDB shell - query collections with special characters

From time to time I found in MongoDB collections that have characters that get interpreted by the mongo shell in a different way and you can't use it as is.

Some example: If your collection name is Items:SubItems and you try to query as you would normally do

mongos> db.Items:SubItems.findOne()
2017-02-10T14:11:17.305+0000 E QUERY    SyntaxError: Unexpected token :

The 'fix' is to use a special javascript notation - so this will work

mongos> db['Items:SubItems'].stats()
{
... 
}

This is called 'Square bracket notation' in javascript.
See Property_accessors for more info.