What are the rules for valid identifiers (e.g. functions, vars, etc) in Bash?

Question

What are the syntax rules for identifiers, especially function and variable names, in Bash?

I wrote a Bash script and tested it on various versions of Bash on Ubuntu

Answer 1

From the manual:

   Shell Function Definitions
       ...
       name () compound-command [redirection]
       function name [()] compound-command [redirection]

name is defined elsewhere:

       name   A  word  consisting  only  of alphanumeric characters and under‐
              scores, and beginning with an alphabetic character or an  under‐
              score.  Also referred to as an identifier.

So hyphens are not valid. And yet, on my system, they do work...

$ bash --version
GNU bash, version 4.2.25(1)-release (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)