Aliases

Aliases provide a convenient facility for accessing items via alternative names.

Sometimes, this can handy for shortening long qualified identifiers:

alias p = the.longest.qualified.identifier.ever;

But more importantly, it allows creating bindings between special items, such as bindable events or dispose methods:

opaque class EnumProperty: Property {
    property m_value {
        variant_t autoget m_value;
        set(variant_t value);
        bindable alias m_onPropChanged = m_onChanged;
    }

    property m_currentIndex {
        size_t autoget m_value;
        set(size_t value);
        bindable alias m_onPropChanged = m_onChanged;
    }

    event m_onChanged();

    // ...
}

alias p = very.long.qualified.identifier;

In the example above, two properties (m_value and m_currentIndex) share the same event m_onChanged as bindable event (i.e. the one to be used for notification of property change).

In the next example, we use the natural method name close and then define an alias which effectively makes the whole class disposable:

opaque class File {
    // ...

    void close();

    alias dispose = close;
}