The dash (-) has been present in identifiers for a long time.

Two examples:

PowerBuilder will treat the expression A-B as either an identifier or an expression depending on the the value of the DashesInIdentifiers property. If DashesInIdentifiers is set to 1, then A-B is an identifier,if set to 0, then A-B.

In Progress 4GL Identifiers for any Progress 4GL objects such as a table, field, variable, or internal procedure, allow the dash characters (but not the first character).

I am sure there are many more languages supporting this. Dashes are also allowed in XML tag names.

The question is if you gain anything from it? I always favoured underscores over dashes for readability. IMHO $this_is_some_name is more readable then $this-is-some-name.

I am not too happy with allowing the quote (‘) in identifiers. I fail to see the benefit. $I'am-afraid-it-will-only-create-confusion;-)

In reply to Re: Syntax Highlighting Editors Beware by dHarry
in thread Syntax Highlighting Editors Beware by John M. Dlugosz

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.