lisp-var-at-point bug?

[Antonio Martinez]

Hi,

[I'm using Gnu Emacs 21.2 on Debian 3.0.]

I think the lisp-var-at-point in inf-lisp.el may have a bug.  It skips 
quote characters prefixing the symbol, not prefix syntax characters, so 
`foo, #'foo etc. aren't converted to lisp vars when I think they could 
be.  Here's the system definition:

(defun lisp-var-at-pt ()
  (condition-case ()
      (save-excursion
        (forward-sexp -1)
        (skip-chars-forward "'")
        (let ((obj (read (current-buffer))))
          (and (symbolp obj) obj)))
    (error nil)))

The following definition doesn't have this behaviour:

(defun lisp-var-at-pt ()
  (condition-case ()
      (save-excursion
        (forward-sexp -1)
        (skip-prefix-chars-forward)
        (let ((obj (read (current-buffer))))
          (and (symbolp obj) obj)))
    (error nil)))

Is the original lisp-var-at-point behaviour a bug?  Is the replacement a 
reasonable fix?

Alternatively, it might be reasonable to use the thing-at-point 
extension interface as follows:

(put 'common-lisp-symbol 'end-op (lambda ()
                                   (forward-sexp)))

(put 'common-lisp-symbol
     'beginning-op
     (lambda ()
       (let ((end (point)))
         (backward-sexp)
         (skip-prefix-chars-forward)
         (re-search-forward "::?" end nil))))

This correctly handles common lisp style package prefixes (for describe 
et al).  lisp-var-at-point becomes (thing-at-point 'common-lisp-symbol).

Thanks in advance for any comments,

                                                --Tony