Subject: bug#3395: 23.0.94; Remove colon after option etc. name

From: "Drew Adams" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 28 May 2009 08:34:26 -0700

>  > A colon is a symbol consituent. A command that picks up 
>  > the symbol at point will conveniently pick up the variable
>  > etc. name, but it will also include the colon (assuming
>  > that it correctly respects Lisp symbol syntax), which is
>  > incorrect.
> 
> Maybe we should improve or expand the regexp of `variable-at-point'
> "\\`\\W*\\(.*?\\)\\W*\\'" to strip _any_ symbol characters
> surrounding a word-bounded substring at point.  Or add yet
> another condition with a laxer regexp.

There is no need to envisage complicated fixes that in any case do not address
the inconvenience I raised. That is not the point of this bug report. Please
open a separate thread if you want to propose such a thing.

I specifically went to the trouble of speaking in generic terms, talking about
"a command that picks up the symbol at point", without referring to any specific
such command, such as `variable-at-point'.

The fix I mentioned lets you use any command at all that picks up symbol syntax
here. A change to `variable-at-point' is not what I'm asking for - that will not
affect other commands that (already DTRT) pick up a symbol name at or near
point.

Simply removing the colon solves the problem, and it has absolutely no negative
effect. Besides being bothersome here, the colon is 100% useless.