bump?
I'm not sure about the arguments for disallowing hyphen.
But one case where hyphens would cause problems is when username is translated to variable name.
I found some more information:
PHP's FILTER_VALIDATE_URL had a bug which disallowed hyphens. It was fixed in versions 5.2.14 and 5.3.3.
Usernames are used in URLs so it may be that Elgg has disallowed hyphens originally because of this bug.
I'm fully booked up, so I can't respond with an offer to do it for you, but since noone else has either - I can point you in the right direction to get you started if you want to tackle it on your own.
http://cashcostello.com/blog/2010/08/building-a-web-services-api-with-elgg.html
We can do this for you. We're an Irish web dev company. Our site is at www.webintelligence.ie. Please send a full spec to info@webintelligence dot ie
this can be achieved in various ways - (authenticated/not) WS primarily and several other methods, if you wanna browse around and find out what these methods involve at the internal coding levels. however.. remember - as you say '..a noob' ;-) so keep in mind that you'll be swimming at the really deep-end of the programming pool!
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