Should alias expand visibility?

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:08:32 -0400, Tomek Sowiński <just at ask.me> wrote:

> Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>
>>> Sorry you had to go through that.  My post was an attempt at dry humor  
>>> ;)
>>>
>>> -Steve
>>
>> Heh, now I get it too. Good one :)
>
> Now me too:) But let's stay on the path:
>
> private void foo();
> public alias foo goo;
>
> We gotta do something about this WTF. Either goo should be perfectly  
> usable
> or the compiler shouldn't allow visibility expanding aliases. Which'd you
> pick?

Serious now:

Your simple example doesn't make any sense.  Why wouldn't you just make  
foo public?  If it's publicly accessible through an alias, it's publicly  
accessible.  I don't buy the "too hard to understand" argument.  Just  
don't document the "private" members :)

IMO, protection attributes applied to an alias make no sense whatsoever.   
I don't think the above code should compile, except dmd accepts lots of  
noop attributes...

Let me draw a parallel example:

int x;
const alias x y;  // I want y to be a const view of x

Does this make any sense?

-Steve