The nextind and prevind doc strings specify the return type as Int for any AbstractString, but inference doesn't know that even in a fresh REPL session:
julia> Base.infer_return_type(prevind, Tuple{AbstractString, Vararg})
Any
julia> Base.infer_return_type(nextind, Tuple{AbstractString, Vararg})
Any
Probably we could add a type assertion or two.