std.string import cleanup: how to fix regression?

[via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 13 November 2014 at 19:27:59 UTC, Ilya Yaroshenko 
wrote:
> alias can not be deprecated :-(

It can. But evidently, static import cannot be selective:

aa.d:
     static import std.algorithm;// : startsWith, endsWith, cmp, 
count;
     static import std.array;// : join, split;

     deprecated {
         alias startsWith = std.algorithm.startsWith;
     }

bb.d:
     import aa;
     bool test() {
         return "".startsWith("");
     }

# dmd -c bb.d
bb.d(2): Deprecation: alias aa.startsWith is deprecated

Remove ";//" to enable the selective imports, and we get errors:
aa.d(1): Error: static import std cannot have an import bind list
aa.d(1): Error: static import __anonymous cannot have an import 
bind list
aa.d(1): Error: static import __anonymous cannot have an import 
bind list
aa.d(1): Error: static import __anonymous cannot have an import 
bind list
aa.d(2): Error: static import std cannot have an import bind list
aa.d(2): Error: static import __anonymous cannot have an import 
bind list

This seems like an arbitrary restriction. [1] states that it is 
disallowed (under the heading "Selective Imports"), but gives no 
justification. It's probably because of the implementation.

Anyway, the imports can be pulled into the `deprecated` block to 
make the intention clear:

     deprecated {
         static import std.algorithm;
         static import std.array;

         alias startsWith = std.algorithm.startsWith;
     }


[1] http://dlang.org/module