At first, you might wonder that:
<?php class A {}; class_alias('A', 'B'); ?>
is equivalent to:
<?php class A {}; class B extends A {}; ?>
BUT when derivation creates a new class name - that means, you can then instantiate a new kind of objects - aliasing is just what it says: a synonym, so objects instantiated with the aliased name are of the exact same kind of objects instantiated with the non-aliased name.
See this code for example:
<?php
class A {};
class B1 extends A {};
class_alias('A', 'B2');
$b1 = new B1; echo get_class($b1); $b2 = new B2; echo get_class($b2); ?>
