RE: why does `variable-at-point' return 0?

[Drew Adams]

> >> What am I missing?
> 
> Dunno if you're missing anything, but you're certainly not 
> the only one wondering. FWIW, for my purposes I've been
> using the function below ever since I discovered `variable-at-point':
> ...
>   (let ((v (variable-at-point)))
>     (unless (eq v 0) v)))

Thanks for confirming that I might not be missing anything.

Maybe Emacs Dev would consider putting this in line with other at-point
functions.

How about deprecating `variable-at-point' and defining a new function
`var-at-point' that DTRT?

(I'm still curious how `variable-at-point' ever got to be defined that way. I
still do wonder if there wasn't perhaps a good reason at the time. I cannot
imagine one, but I've been surprised before.)