On 9/1/21 23:50, IOhannes m zmölnig wrote:
i'm not entirely sure whether modern versions of groff would handle these dashes correctly. in any case, groff(7) (e.g. [1]) says that an ordinary "minus sign" is supposed to be written as "\-".


ah, here's a [reference](https://liw.fi/manpages/):

> An unfortunate bit of arcane syntax is that dashes in options should
> be prefixed by backslashes. Thus, write \-\-bits, not just --bits. The
> Debian and Ubuntu implementation of man treats them the same, for
> terminal output, but this is not portable. Technically a naked - means
> a hyphen, whereas \- means a minus sign. Typographically these are
> distinct, and they are also distinct in Unicode. The typesetter is
> free to break a line at a hyphen, but not at a minus. For dashes in
> options, you should thus use minuses, but in normal text, for normal
> words, the hyphen.

it might well be, that my is a bit too zealous and escapes dashes that don't actually need escaping. however, wherever you want a literal "-" that is parsed by software, you should use a "\-"

gmsr
IOhannes

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