Renaming a class in C++

Question

I have a class that I would like to reference in my header file, which is in a long chain of nested namespaces: MySpaceA::MySpaceB::MySpaceC::MySpaceD::MyVeryLongNamedClass. I would like to use it under a different name, but not MyVeryLongNamedClass -- something shorter and more useful, like MyClass.

I could put using MySpaceA::MySpaceB::MySpaceC::MySpaceD in my header, but I do not want to import the whole namespace. I would prefer to have some kind of construction like

using MyClass = MySpaceA::MySpaceB::MySpaceC::MySpaceD::MyVeryLongNamedClass

I know this is possible with name spaces, but I cannot seem to get it to work with classes.

Thank you very much for your help.

Answer 1

typedef MySpaceA::MySpaceB::MySpaceC::MySpaceD::MyVeryLongNamedClass MyClass;

For templates, you could use a template typedef:

template <typename T>
struct MyClass {
  typedef MySpaceA::MySpaceB::MySpaceC::MySpaceD::MyVeryLongNamedClass<T> type;
};

Now you can refer to MyClass<T>::type instead of MySpaceA::MySpaceB::MySpaceC::MySpaceD::MyVeryLongNamedClass<T>.