Technical Note: How to enter ? - Question mark character in FortiGate CLI

[dsharma]

Description

This article describes how to enter '?' character in FortiGate CLI.

Scope

FortiGate.

Solution

'?' is used in FortiGate CLI :

1) To display brief help during command entry.

2) Press the question mark (?) key at the command prompt to display a list of the commands available and a description of each command.
 
3) Type a word or part of a word, then press the question mark (?) key to display a list of valid word completions or subsequent words, and to display each.

In some cases, like static url filter, where there is a need to enter a '?' character. Proceed as follows:

1) Press ctrl-v.

2) Type '?' character.

Note : This can be only done in a terminal application like Putty or OpenSSH etc. This will not work in the CLI within the GUI.