Alias Declarations

A symbol can be declared as an alias of another symbol. For example:

	import string;

	alias string.strlen mylen;
	...
	int len = mylen("hello");	// actually calls string.strlen()
	

The following alias declarations are valid:

	template Foo2(T) { alias T t; }
	instance Foo2(int) t1;	// a TemplateAliasDeclaration
	alias instance Foo2(int).t t2;
	alias t1.t t3;
	alias t2 t4;
	alias instance Foo2(int) t5;

	t1.t v1;	// v1 is type int
	t2 v2;		// v2 is type int
	t3 v3;		// v3 is type int
	t4 v4;		// v4 is type int
	t5.t v5;	// v5 is type int
	

Aliased symbols are useful as a shorthand for a long qualified symbol name, or as a way to redirect references from one symbol to another:

	version (Win32)
	{
	    alias win32.foo myfoo;
	}
	version (linux)
	{
	    alias linux.bar myfoo;
	}
	

Note: Type aliases can sometimes look indistinguishable from alias declarations:

	alias foo.bar abc;	// is it a type or a symbol?
	

The distinction is made in the semantic analysis pass.

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"Walter" <walter@digitalmars.com> wrote in message news:alr39k$2nk3$1@digitaldaemon.com...