bug#21391: 24.5; `thing-at-point' should return a string

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 07.11.2016 17:14, Eli Zaretskii wrote:

> > It's natural if `thing-at-point' returns the thing as a string.
> > When the user don't want a string then s?he can use the specific
> > functions, like `number-at-point' or `list-at-point'.
>
> Isn't that completely backward-incompatible?

When thing is a number? Maybe. I don't imagine it's used very often.

> If so, I don't think we
> can do that.

It's pretty clearly a bug: most other "things" behave otherwise (list, 
sexp, symbol). I'd very much rather we didn't retain conceptual problems 
like that just for the sake of compatibility.