What is nameout() for?

I am confused by nameout().  There are a number of places where table
names are output using nameout(), and many other cases where they are
just output without calling nameout.  Can someone explain why the dash
is important?  I can see the pstrdup as being important, but not in all
of the cases where nameout is called.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

/**      nameout - converts internal reprsentation to "..."*/
char *
nameout(NameData *s)
{     if (s == NULL)       return "-";   else        return pstrdup(s->data);
}

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