RE: thing-at-point: inconsistent behaviour?

[Drew Adams]

> When you are looking for a buffer substring, you call
> `bounds-of-thing-at-point'; when you are looking for a string
> result, you call `thing-at-point'; when you want the result
> as a sexp, you call the specialized function.

There is even another complication/confusion.  "Symbol" in Emacs can refer to
two different things, especially as regards text that might represent a name.

* It can refer to a string of chars that have symbol syntax (or symbol-or-word
syntax) in a given mode - any mode, not just Lisp.

* It can refer to a Lisp symbol, i.e., a specific kind of Lisp object (with the
possibility of a non-nil `symbol-value' and `symbol-function, for instance).

IMO, most Elisp programs use thing-at-point functions to grab a string
representing the name of something or representing a sexp or other object (URL,
file name, etc.).

In the case of a symbol, IMO most programs really want/need to grab a symbol
_name_, often for use as the default value in an interactive spec.  Most do not
really want/need a Lisp symbol.  And even when they do, they can call `intern'
or `intern-soft' or `make-symbol' themselves.

In `thingatpt+.el' there are separate functions that return a Lisp symbol (i.e.,
interned in the standard `obarray'), and there are other functions that return a
symbol name.  The symbol-name functions are used more often, IMO.

Symbols:

 `symbol-at-point'
 `symbol-nearest-point'
 `non-nil-symbol-nearest-point' 

Symbol names:

 `non-nil-symbol-name-at-point'
 `symbol-name-nearest-point'
 `non-nil-symbol-name-nearest-point'
 `region-or-non-nil-symbol-name-nearest-point' 

(There are also functions that return the symbol or symbol name plus its bounds
in the buffer, and so on.)