recursive alias not triggers identifier warning

Is it a "by design" or a "bug" that an alias calling itself as an identifier doesn't trigger the identifier warning? I found this closed thread related to the topic, but it dealt with calling its own name as a /command but didn't say the expected result when called as an $identifier.

https://forums.mirc.com/ubbthreads.php/topics/246559/error-recursive-call

Code

alias test_recursive {
  if ($1 == recursive) return $calc($2 + 1)
  var %x 0
  noop $findfile($mircdir,*.ini,0,var -s %x $test_recursive(recursive,%x) )
  echo -a called %x times recursively from within findfile, but this fails without triggering identifier warning:
  var -s %x $test_recursive(recursive,%x)
}

Thanks for your bug report. Yes, that is how it should behave. Recursion is only blocked if it is a direct call. It is never blocked if it is through an indirect call.

Just to be clear, my report was not whether or not the identifier call should be blocked, it was that it was returning $null in spite of "identifier warning" being enabled.

Ah, right, sorry about that. The identifier warning is for non-existent identifiers. In this case, the identifier exists. As has always been the case, a recursive call to the same identifier will return $null.