Keyword Aliasing Behaviour

["Sean B. Palmer" <sean@miscoranda.com>]

Using zsh 4.2.6, I note that keywords can be aliased. For example:

    alias in='test'

But then this gets expanded when the "in" keyword is used in a case:

   $ case $HOME in *) :;; esac
   zsh: parse error near `test'

I asked the #zsh IRC channel on Freenode, and a member there thought
it sounded like a bug and directed me to this mailing list. Can anyone
confirm that this is a bug, or is it a feature? If it's a bug, is it
fixed in a later version? If a feature, what is the rationale for it?

I notice that man zshall states that unless alias is provided with a
-g flag, making the alias global, the alias will only be expanded in a
command position. Since the "in" keyword in a case statement is not in
a command position, the behaviour I'm seeing appears to be erroneous.

The case $var { ... } syntax was suggested to me on #zsh, and is
useful but I probably shouldn't be rebinding keywords anyway.
Nevertheless, this was surprising behaviour.

Thanks,

--
Sean B. Palmer, http://inamidst.com/sbp/