At 2017-04-21T21:56:24-0400, Doug McIlroy wrote:
> I think it's pretty hopeless to ask for AI that can tell
> whether a pasted symbol is a hyphen or a minus sign.
> The answer is likely to depend on whether it is being
> pasted into a program or into a document.

Here's my attempt at clarifying the issue.

Regards,
Branden
diff '--color=always' -u groff.orig/groff.7 groff/groff.7
--- groff.orig/groff.7	2017-04-21 22:30:26.841049571 -0400
+++ groff/groff.7	2017-04-21 22:48:22.891848022 -0400
@@ -2826,7 +2826,13 @@
 .
 .TP
 .ESC -
-The \- (minus) sign in the current font.
+The \- (minus) sign in the current font,
+except in the
+.B an
+and
+.B andoc
+macro packages used for manual pages, where it stands for the ASCII
+hyphen-minus (0x2D).
 .
 .TP
 .ESC _
@@ -2836,7 +2842,8 @@
 .
 .TP
 .ESC .
-The same as a dot (\[oq].\[cq]).  Necessary in nested macro
+The same as a dot (\[oq].\[cq]).
+Necessary in nested macro
 definitions so that \[oq]\[rs]\[rs]..\[cq] expands to \[oq]..\[cq].
 .
 .TP
diff '--color=always' -u groff.orig/groff_char.7 groff/groff_char.7
--- groff.orig/groff_char.7	2017-04-21 22:14:32.801694552 -0400
+++ groff/groff_char.7	2017-04-21 22:49:57.282990951 -0400
@@ -269,6 +269,16 @@
 .B -
 the ISO \%latin1 \[oq]Hyphen, Minus Sign\[cq] (code\ 45) prints as a
 hyphen; a minus sign can be obtained with \[oq]\f(CW\e-\fP\[cq].
+.I Exception:
+In the
+.B an
+and
+.B doc
+macro packages used for manual pages, \[oq]\f(CW\e-\fP\[cq] is mapped
+back to code\ 45; a hyphen or dash of the appropriate width can be found
+in the table
+.BR Punctuation ,
+below, and a mathematical minus sign with \[oq]\f(CW\e(mi\fP\[cq].
 .
 .
 .TP

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