Double Hyphen in Wordpress

Before migrating to Octopress (and later to Hugo), this blog was written in Wordpress. Every time I posted a tutorial with commands that have options with double hyphens (example: ls --all), Wordpress formatted the two consecutive hyphens (--) as a single dash (—). This probably confused the reader (e.g., ls --all), and also prevented the code from simply being copied from the blog and pasted into the terminal.

We can change this configuration directly in the Wordpress source code.

1. Edit the static_characters array, contained in the file wp-includes/formatting.php

   juliobor@box780 ~  $  vim www/blog/wp-includes/formatting.php
   

Before:

$static_characters = array_merge( array('---', ' -- ', '--', ' - ', 'xn–', '...', '``', '\'\'', ' (tm)'), $cockney );
$static_replacements = array_merge( array($em_dash, ' ' . $em_dash . ' ', $en_dash, ' ' . $en_dash . ' ', 'xn--', '…', $opening_quote, $closing_quote, ' ™'), $cockneyreplace );

After:

$static_characters = array_merge( array('------', ' ---- ', '----', ' - ', 'xn–', '...', '``', '\'\'', ' (tm)'), $cockney );
$static_replacements = array_merge( array($em_dash, ' ' . $em_dash . ' ', $en_dash, ' ' . $en_dash . ' ', 'xn--', '…', $opening_quote, $closing_quote, ' ™'), $cockneyreplace );

Now -- will appear as two small hyphens. If we want to insert a dash (—), we will need to type four consecutive hyphens.

NOTE: Remember to do this after all Wordpress updates.