The current code that LilyPond uses to handle lyric hyphens (i.e., LyricHyphen grobs) often leads to very short hyphens or even small gaps between syllables with no hyphen visible. This snippet merges adjacent syllables into one string in such cases, also taking care of ligatures as if the string was not hyphenated.
It supersedes previous implementations of “magnetic snap” engravers that were in circulation via the lilypond-user mailing list.