When using the Mkdown processor, consecutive hyphens inside single backquotes are rendered as an en-dash. Inside a block delimited by triple backquotes, they are properly rendered as typed.
The Down and Ink processors both render consecutive hyphens inside single backquotes as typed.
Here in this forum, this seems to work as expected: cmdname --help. But in Notenik with the Mkdown processor, that would render as “cmdname –help”.
It seems to me, at least, as if consecutive hyphens should render as typed in both contexts, whether inside single backquotes or inside a code block.