Dashes in parameters when using pig server

[Alex Rovner]

Hello,

I am using pig through the pig server. I need to pass some parameters to the
pig script which I am passing by calling the
pigServer.registerScript(pigScript, params);

If my parameters have dashes in them, pig fails with the following
(Parameter used here is run-date=20110531 where "run-date" is the key and
20110531 is the value):

11/10/18 19:44:57 ERROR pig.PigServer: Encountered " <OTHER> "-date=20110531
"" at line 1, column 6.
Was expecting:
    "=" ...

Are dashes not allowed in keys of parameters?

Thanks
Alex R