(j3.2006) LinkedIn Question re Why TYPEALIAS Not in Fortran 2003

[Van Snyder]

On Mon, 2014-01-27 at 13:00 +0000, Bill Long wrote:
> On Jan 25, 2014, at 8:01 PM, Van Snyder <van.snyder at jpl.nasa.gov>
> wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, 2014-01-25 at 18:48 -0600, Craig Dedo wrote:

> >>            I have forgotten why TYPEALIAS was dropped late in the
> >> process.  Does anyone remember why this happened?
> > 
> > 1.  It was the wrong thing to do.  New types (not synonymns) are more
> > useful, and can do everything that type aliases can do -- but not vice
> > versa.
> 
> Certainly not true.  You cannot make a new intrinsic type, which leads
> to clumsy hacks when trying to map typedefs in C. 

This isn't a problem if you do it right.  You model new types on type
extension, with the same sort of compatibility rules.