Re: thing-at-point: inconsistent behaviour?

["Andreas Röhler" <andreas.roehler@easy-emacs.de>]

Am 15.08.2012 21:00, schrieb Raffaele Ricciardi:
> On 08/15/2012 07:34 PM, Barry Margolin wrote:
>  > In article <a926tjFeslU1@mid.individual.net>,
>  >   Raffaele Ricciardi <rfflrccrd@gmail.com> wrote:
>  >
>  >> Hello there,
>  >>
>  >> the documentation of `thing-at-point' states that such function returns "the
>  >> thing around or next to point".  This is not the case with either
>  >> (thing-at-point
>  >> 'symbol) or (thing-at-point 'sexp), for they both may return the thing
>  >> before
>  >> point.  Try it with the following snippet (! symbolizes the point):
>  >
>  > Doesn't "next to" include both immediately before and immediately after?
>
> I stand corrected after having consulted a dictionary.  Then it is
> (thing-at-point 'list) that is misbehaving.
>


hmm, IMHO you was right. Here is the code

(defun symbol-at-point ()
   "Return the symbol at point, or nil if none is found."
   (let ((thing (thing-at-point 'symbol)))
     (if thing (intern thing))))

last line don't return the thing as delivered by thing-at-point but the result of (intern thing)

that way breaking consistency.

BTW built a library at top of thing-at-point rationale, which aims to avoid that

https://launchpad.net/s-x-emacs-werkstatt/trunk/1.3/+download/S-X-Emacs-Werkstatt-1.3.tar.gz



>  >
>  >>
>  >> A!
>  >> (A)!
>  >>
>  >> On the contrary, (bounds-of-thing-at-point 'list) returns nil as
>  >> expected in this
>  >> snippet:
>  >>
>  >> (A)!
>  >>
>  >> Is this inconsistent behaviour or am I missing something?
>  >>
>  >> Tested on GNU Emacs 24.1 started with "emacs -Q".
>  >>
>  >> Thank you.
>  >
>  > I think this is a problem with the thing-at-point handler for 'list.
>  > It's doing some weird stuff, that I think is intended to distinguide
>  > lists from sexps.
>
> Aren't lists sexps as well?
>