better string

[Mike B Johnson via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 7 June 2017 at 21:32:25 UTC, ag0aep6g wrote:
> On 06/07/2017 12:58 PM, Mike B Johnson wrote:
>> Why not alias string so that one can easily switch from the 
>> old string or wstring, etc?
>> 
>> e.g., rename string internally to sstring or whatever.
>> 
>> then globally define
>> 
>> alias string = sstring;
>> 
>> Which can be over realiased to wstring to affect the whole 
>> program
>> 
>> alias string = wstring;
>> 
>> Or use a command line to set it or whatever makes you happy.
>
> I'm not sure what exactly you're asking for, but `string` is an 
> alias already (of `immutable(char)[]`). And you can define your 
> own `string` as you like. `alias string = wstring;` works.

But that isn't program/compiler wide. e.g., stringof won't return 
a wstring if you do the alias, will it?

Or will simply setting "alias string = wstring;" at the top of my 
program end up having the entire program, regardless of what it 
is, use wstring's instead of strings?

e.g.,

when I do a string literal

"This is a string" but do your alias, is the literal a string or 
wstring?

The reason I say this is because I converted my program to use 
wstrings but I got many errors because of string literals being 
interpreted as strings and no automatic conversion took place, I 
had to append w to turn then in to wstrings.