Manifest constants - why not 'alias' ?

[mandel]

On Thu, 06 Dec 2007 21:07:18 -0800, Walter Bright wrote:

> David Gileadi wrote:
>> FWIW, alias makes the most sense to me out of the current crop of
>> suggestions.  To me it says that wherever I see the alias, it will be
>> replaced with whatever value the alias is for.  That seems to describe
>> manifest constants exactly.
> 
> Since there's already:
> 
> 	alias X Y;
> 
> it would seem confusing to add:
> 
> 	alias Y = X;

I know it was asked before for sure,
but could someone point out why not just use:

alias Y 42;
alias Z "abc";
alias X [1,2,3];

- it points out that it doesn't have a memory address (no '=' assigment)
- it will be filled in for X, Y, Z

btw.: enum for compile time constants doesn't fit it's 
main meaning (enumeration), but it's secondary
meaning as compile time constants.
It's also limited (regarding to strings etc.).
I would call it a hack. :P