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bbfa235
(Get the code!)
The character set restriction of PVD fields (in groups or otherwise) is meant to mirror that of C89 keywords.
> int abc;
... is valid
> int a-bc;
... is not
This was a somewhat arbitrary decision made many years ago. imo. changing it is primarily a question of backwards compatibility. Anything rejected by (or crashing) existing/older clients is a non-starter.
Be aware that there is no separate versioning for the PVD encoding. imo. an oversight in the design. The negotiated PVA protocol version is the only way to communicate handle changes. You should also be aware that the existing pvData (de)serialization APIs don't expose the negotiated protocol version. So making even seemingly small changes to the PVD encoding format would be complicated.