Andreas Röhler <andreas.roehler@easy-emacs.de> writes:

> as result of ‘thing-at-point-looking-at’ finally is delivered by
> ‘looking-at’,
> don't see any sense in calling ‘re-search-forward’ first.

The test added below fails if the re-search-forward in
thing-at-point-looking-at is commented out.  Does that tell you what the
"sense" is?