basic types and alias

[Steven Schveighoffer]

On Sun, 12 Feb 2012 15:44:22 -0500, Walter Bright  
<newshound2 at digitalmars.com> wrote:

> On 2/12/2012 11:27 AM, Timon Gehr wrote:
>> alias int I; // OK
>> template T(alias I){}
>> mixin T!int; // NG
>>
>> Is there any reason why we should not get rid of this inconsistency as  
>> fast as
>> possible? What does not accepting basic types as template alias  
>> parameters buy
>> anyone?
>
> alias parameters accept symbols. Keywords are not symbols. To pass a  
> type, just use template T(I).

Yeah, but types can be keywords, and types can be symbols.  There are good  
use cases to being able to alias int in a template.

This works:

// would have used typedef, but typedef is deprecated...
struct S
{
    int ___val;
    alias ___val this;
}
template T(alias I) {}
mixin T!S;

I don't see the reason to present such an obstacle.

You could ease the restriction to "you can alias only symbols or keywords  
that could be aliased to symbols".

-Steve