That's how it works in TeX as well: one dash is a hyphen, two an en dash, three an em dash.

I try to avoid hyphen-based range notation. It's sometimes hard to tell if a single hyphen was intended to be a minus sign. Double hyphens look like ASCII em-dashes. I've never heard of of the triple convention and would be confused if you neglected an inline explanation.

Here are some alternatives:

* English: from 1 to 3

* Some programming languages: 1..3

* Math: [1, 3)

I guess this also the main purpose of the en-dash* : http://www.thepunctuationguide.com/en-dash.html . The problem there is that en-dashes can be inaccessible as in my case--typing on a phone.

* I actually originally missed your point because you forgot the hyphen between 'en' and 'dash'.