I would expect/want no conversion in either case. Maybe instead of printing based purely off type we can see what how the data was represented and delegate based off that. 
-------- Original message --------From: Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> Date: 5/11/24  12:47 PM  (GMT-05:00) To: Michael Heerdegen <michael_heerdegen@web.de> Cc: 70868@debbugs.gnu.org, iarchivedmywholelife@gmail.com Subject: Re: bug#70868: 30.0.50; > Cc: iarchivedmywholelife@gmail.com> Date: Sat, 11 May 2024 18:38:48 +0200> From:  Michael Heerdegen via "Bug reports for GNU Emacs,>  the Swiss army knife of text editors" <bug-gnu-emacs@gnu.org>> > > Anyway, adding a user option will probably be the best solution we can> > implement.> > We already have `print-integers-as-characters', though.  So if we want to> make this completely controllable on the per usage basis, removing those> lines would indeed make more sense.  Then the user could just bind> `print-integers-as-characters' as for any other printing action.The issue here is user expectations from what Emacs does by default.To see what I mean, remove those lines, and then try  M-: (pp-emacs-lisp-code '(eq foo ?a)) RETEvidently, there are two sides to this coin.