refInt = ref int: how to achieve this? or is this a bug?

[mw]

On Wednesday, 17 June 2020 at 20:47:59 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer 
wrote:
> Essentially, your alias statement becomes:
>
> alias refInt = int;
>
> Which in itself is somewhat of a "feature", as storage classes 
> that do not apply are ignored. Some may consider it a bug, but 
> I haven't seen anyone attempt something like what you have, it 
> sure seems like the compiler should complain.

I would consider it a bug, *even* C++ can handle this better :-)  
i.e. no surprise to the programmer.

cat reft.cpp
----------------------
#include <stdio.h>

typedef int& refInt;

void f(refInt i) {
   i = 456;
}

int main() {
   int i = 123;
   printf("%d\n", i);
   f(i);
   printf("%d\n", i);
}
----------------------

$ make reft
g++     reft.cpp   -o reft


$ ./reft
123
456