Solon Edmunds wrote:

> First the $ alias thing - having the $ is great, not having it leads to
> ambiguity in your code as to what was meant, right?

And my opinion is the complete opposite. :-)
I think this should be transparent. Adding a $ whart would just force more
syntax requirements than needed upon the clients. What good would it be?
Making an explicit statement to the client that it's using an alias? Why
should the client care?

Compare it with any other alias system, e.g. alias in a *nix shell, mounting
an SMB share in Win32, creating a link in a filesystem. The syntax to access
these would be exactly as accessing the real/native "thing".

/Mike