Multiple alias this failed workaround...obscure error message

[matovitch via Digitalmars-d-learn]

On Wednesday, 11 June 2014 at 20:53:21 UTC, Jonathan M Davis via 
Digitalmars-d-learn wrote:
>
> I don't believe that it's legal to use a cast in an alias 
> declaration, and
> that's certainly what the error seems to be indicating. Also, 
> using ref in a
> cast is definitely illegal regardless of where the cast is. ref 
> is not part
> of a type. The only places that you can use it are function 
> parameters, return
> types, and foreach variables. If you want to do anything like 
> you seem to be
> trying to do, you're going to have to alias a function which 
> does the cast for
> you rather than try and alias the variable itself.
>
> I also don't see anything here that would work as any kind of 
> multiple alias
> this.
>
> - Jonathan M Davis

Thank you, I was assuming D worked as C++ but ref not being part 
of type is so much better ! (According to Marc Schütz your 
solution isn't doing so well.)

About alias working with identifier but not with (runtime) 
expression. Alias should work with compile time expression like 
map!(x=>2*x) right ? So a static cast should work isn't it ? 
(though static_cast doesn't exist in D :/)