^{Originally posted by tkurtbond January 13, 2025}
Why does pandoc convert hyphen-minus to minus signs in text when outputing to ms?

For instance, why does running

# Trying out Hyphen-Minus in pandoc -w ms

This is a hyphen-minus, -, which pandoc -w ms turns into a Unicode minus sign.

Use the command ``ls -a`` to see all the dotfiles in a directory.

through

pandoc -r markdown -w ms --output=hyphen-minus.ms  hyphen-minus.md

become

.SH 1
Trying out Hyphen\-Minus in pandoc \-w ms
.pdfhref O 1 "Trying out Hyphen-Minus in pandoc -w ms"
.pdfhref M "trying-out-hyphen-minus-in-pandoc--w-ms"
.LP
This is a hyphen\-minus, \-, which pandoc \-w ms turns into a Unicode
minus sign.
.PP
Use the command \f[CR]ls \-a\f[R] to see all the dotfiles in a
directory.

with all those blasted \-s, which are the troff form for entering a minus sign?

Automagically changing hypen-minus to minus signs is never a good thing to do. It changes the example ls -a command to something that won't work because instead of a hyphen-minus it has a stupid minus sign, which is not the character that introduces an option in a command line program, so the command doesn't work right.

The discussion of thesmart extension in the documents doesn't say anything aobut translating hypen-minus to minus, but I tried -r markdown-smart, which didn't seem to do anything.

$ pandoc --version
pandoc 3.6.2
Features: +server +lua
Scripting engine: Lua 5.4
User data directory: /home/tkb/.pandoc

(Didn't I have this discussion on the old pandoc-discuss mailing list once?)