Any way to extend org-mode tags to include characters like "-"?

Question

BRIEF: can the characters permitted in org-mode tags be extenced in any way?

E.g. to include -, dashes?

DETAIL:

I see

http://orgmode.org/org.html#Tags

Tags are normal words containing letters, numbers, ‘_’, and ‘@’. Tags must be preceded and followed by a single colon, e.g., ‘:work:’.

I am somewhat surprised that this is not extensible. Is it, and I have missed it?

TODO keywords can include dashes. Occasionally I would like to treat TODOs as intermiscible wth tags - e.g. move a TODO to a tag, and vice versa - but this syntax difference gets in the way.

Before I start coding, does anyone know why dashes are not allowed? I conjecture confusion with timestamps.

Answer 1

Not certain, but it is likely because certain agenda search strings use "-" as an operator, and there is not yet a way to escape those using "-".

I have used hyphens for properties and spaces for todo kw with no problems for my purposes, but I have not tried them in searches.

The new exporter will be included in 8.0 and with it a detailed description of syntax. If you want to file a feature request to allow hyphens, perhaps by allowing escaping in search strings, now is the time to do it.