templates - Why do type aliases in C++ use 'using' instead of 'typedef' in their syntax?

Question

Clearly, type aliases and templated type aliases are semantically equivalent to typedefs and an extension of typedefs to support template. How come new syntax with the using keyword was created for these instead of using typedefs for the first and some syntax extension with the word typedef.

NOTE: This is not a clone of the "difference between using and typedef" question. I know that using gives the advantage of defining a family of typedefs. What I am asking is why did the standard people decide on having this extension use the using keyword instead of the typedef keyword. This seems like it just adds confusion in the language.

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/24916435/why-do-type-aliases-in-c-use-using-instead-of-typedef-in-their-syntax

Answer 1

What you suggest was actually proposed back in 2002 in document N1406 by Herb Sutter. It would allow, for example, to write:

template<typename T> typedef X<T,int> Xi; 

This was later revised in N1449 by Gabriel Dos Reis and Mat Marcus. They adopt the using syntax, and note the following:

Note that we specifically avoid the term “typedef template” and introduce the new syntax involving the pair “using” and “=” to help avoid confusion: we are not defining any types here, we are introducing a synonym (i.e. alias) for an abstraction of a type-id (i.e. type expression) involving template parameters.

They also state:

Two straw polls were taken regarding syntax. A strong majority voted to avoid the typedef template syntax, in favor of the “=” syntax. A second vote indicated strong preference for the “using” keyword as opposed to a word like “alias” or the absence of any keyword as in the draft version of this proposal. The motivation for using any keyword at all stemmed partly from the desire to use a syntax that might be compatible with the non-template aliasing direction briefly outlined above.

This syntax was then adopted in the final proposal N2258 by Gabriel Dos Reis and Bjarne Stroustrup.