"well formed" vs. "well-formed"

[mclow]

Those seem to be used more or less interchangeably in the standard. Are they the same? If so, shouldn't they be written the same way?

"Well formed" --> 100+ uses
"Well-formed" --> 22 uses.

I can provide a list upon request.

[jensmaurer]

My understanding of the rules of English grammar is that we need a hyphen if we have a compound adjective, and we shouldn't have one if it's a verb + adverb "well" combination.

For example, "a well-formed program" is a program that has a certain property (adjective), but "the program is [well] formed" does not have a hyphen ("well" is adverb; replace with "quickly" if you wish).

That said, our use of "well-formed" seems to get a life of its own as a stand-alone adjective, so the verb interpretation along "is formed well" turns out to be rather odd. We should converge to "well-formed".

[jensmaurer]

I count only 20 or so occurrences of "well formed".

[burblebee]

I'm happy with well-formed. Although I think we might want to finish applying the motions before merging any PRs. Hopefully we'll be done soon...