On Sunday, 2 February 2014 at 00:26:44 UTC, Timon Gehr wrote:
> On 02/02/2014 01:21 AM, Jesse Phillips wrote:
>>
>> Pretty sure "alias this" was actually a driving force. E.g
>>
>> "You should use alias this?"
>>
>> "How, I added alias this and it didn't compile?"
>>
>> "The syntax 'alias TheThingToAlias this'"
>>
>> "So not 'alias this' then."
>
> The syntax was actively removed.
>
> https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/pull/1413
> https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/dmd/pull/1685

Yes, "actively"

"It'd do this community a lot of good if people would stop assuming malice when simple unawareness is far more likely. If there's issues that should block releases, those that are aware of the blockers really need to raise them. Don't assume that every pull request and every thread is read by those that need to see them."

Kenji was quite admit that it was a mistake, but not one person agreed. The closest: "@9rnsr I agree with removing the syntax for the time being." --Walter

I agree with Kenji that 'alias this' and 'alias symbol symbol' are different. I don't agree an entirely new (old) syntax needs to be used to distinguish them. I think it is syntactic overhead which provides no benefit.

Though I could agree, explaining: 'alias this : symbol' isn't too hard (this implicitly converses to symbol (i.e. it takes from the is() and template expressions)

Personally I really want the old alias syntax to vanish. I hate it, though I know it won't leave the language.