As I've been finding myself constantly desiring to alias
expressions and identifiers for many years, I'd like to ask again
whether it would be possible to extend either the alias-statement
or the with-statement. It would be great to relieve the constant
tension between descriptiveness, (often outside your control),
and brevity in a straightforward manner.
There is something missing when your fields and parameters start
out with proper names but end up as cryptic abbreviations when
you start using them. Sometimes you want to look at an identifier
and understand its purpose, other times you want to look at a
bunch of expressions and statements and understand their pattern.
I think an expressive language should support both needs without
tension. It would also isolate names and reduce editing when
names change.
Some thoughts about extending the with-statement were brought up
here earlier:
http://forum.dlang.org/post/[email protected]
I don't care much whether it would be with, alias or possibly
something clever already existing, but a solution should be easy
to use, easy to read and shouldn't introduce any possible
overhead at runtime.
1) Are there any technical blockers for extending the alias- or
with-statement?
2) Does it carry its own weight?
