“using” directive in Java

Question

When the type name is too long, in C# i can create alias like this:

using Dict = System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary;

Answer 1

Short answer: nope.

However, you can (and should) import classes so as to not use their fully qualified name:

import java.lang.String
// ....
String s = "hello, world.";

If you must define an alias since your class is using multi-level generics or whatnot, you can use this hack - by defining a private class which extends the class you're aliasing (generics included) just for the sake of having an easy-to-use handle:

class MyMap extends HashMap {}

MyMap a = new MyMap();
a.put("key", "val");

(adding class aliases was requested before as an enhancement to Java, and is still pending)