Rename 'type' to 'typedef' or something?

Can we rename the ‘type’ keyword to something else, maybe ‘typedef’? ‘type’ is such a useful word to use in variable and attribute names.

-Phil

Else we could also reuse Python’s (I don’t know whether official) style for variables with keywords as name, by appending an underscore. type -> type_

Yeah that’s what I currently do. libsyntax uses ‘ty’ I guess for the same reason. Feels like a bit of a sucky workaround for a keyword not used that often.

Feels like a bit of a sucky workaround for a keyword not used that often.

Note that it's going to be used considerably more often with associated types.

type is used by many languages for defining type synonyms, for example, Scala and Haskell. It is clean and nice and, as @glaebhoerl said, it will be used much more often if (when?) associated types are accepted.

Also typedef in C/C++ is different from type in Rust and other languages; it does not create real type synonyms, it creates new types (consider variable definitions: struct S a = ...; for struct S { ... }; and S a = ... for typedef struct { ... } S). Renaming type into typedef may be confusing for newcomers from C.

typedef in C/C++ does define type aliases, just that struct is part of all non-typedefed struct names.

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