Re: UDAs and no complaints about "need 'this'"

[Maxim Fomin via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 9 April 2015 at 09:53:15 UTC, John Colvin wrote:
struct BigLongStructName
{
        int evenLongerMemberName;
}
struct QN{}

unittest
{
        BigLongStructName bigLongStructName;

        @(bigLongStructName.evenLongerMemberName)
                QN quickName;
        
        __traits(getAttributes, quickName)[0]++;
}

Is it just me or is it weird that this works? Once you pull the 
UDA out from being a storage class and attempt to alias it, you 
get the usual "need 'this' for 'evenLongerMemberName' of type 
'int'" error messages on use.

Why are UDAs so special? I don't believe there's any other way 
to achieve this sort of effective renaming.

For me it seems to fit into D type system (which is not 
necessarily is a good idea).

struct S
{
        int i;
}

alias S.i si;

void main(){ /*si++;*/}

Behavior of D depends sometimes on it internals, not on 
programmers' expectations. Since D has never been stabilized, the 
boundary between WAT and bugs is partially undefined.