Re: symbol-at-point

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> It's my hope that the restriction to point has itself held back the use of
> thingatpt functions, and that offering the "near" functions might help
> users get better default values.

I'm pretty sure that <foo>-near-point would not make authors provide default
values in more cases.  <foo>-at-point works well enough in most cases that
it's hard to believe an author would say "oh, no: I want <foo>-near-point or
nothing at all.  None of that <foo>-at-point crap!"

> (FWIW, the danger you see from a nil return value for `symbol-at-point' is
> exaggerated, I think, since a non-nil symbol would generally be what is
> sought. nil can always be interpreted as "no, there is no non-nil symbol at
> point". Yes, the name of the function does not make this clear.)

Problem is that "nil" is a perfectly normal identifier in most languages.


        Stefan