Rebol Script Error: Alias word is already in use: f whereas it isn't true

Question

I have defined these alias in user.r

alias 'powershell "pw"
alias 'explorer "o"
alias 'open-program-files "pf"
alias 'cmd "dos"
alias 'edituser "eu"
alias 'run-firefox "fx"
alias 'run-firefox "f"

When launching rebol it shows

** Script Error: Alias word is already in use: f
** Near: alias 'run-firefox "f"

This is not true, in fact when I type source f it says undefined:

>> source f
f: undefined
>>

So why this message ?

Answer 1

Sadly, REBOL's ALIAS has a severe weakness, at least in R2: it works only globally.

So if any process has used a word already, it is not available for ALIASing.

Now, you have not defined it. But if you check the total works already defined when you start a fresh console, you may be surprised to see there are several thousand of them:

 print length? first system/words

And (at least with the version of R2 I just tried it on), that includes the word f:

find first system/words 'f

Even though f has no current value, the mere fact that it has been previously uses stops it being used with ALIAS.

ALIAS is a strong candidate for removal in R3 because of this (and other) limitations in its use.