Stuart Brooks wrote:
According to Stroustrup (7.4), certain criteria are tried in order, so as to determine which matches the closest. I would have thought that, at least in the case of s2 (above), the "const char* getString() const" method would have been selected. I had also hoped that since the second one was protected, it would use the first one instead in any case. Am I missing something here?
yes. G++'s behaviour is correct. The non-const version is selected because the object is non-constant. therefore an exact match is a better conversion than the qualification conversion (as the latter contains the former). Access is not considered until after overload resolution. That separation allows you to relax the access on a member and not break an already working program.
nathan
-- Nathan Sidwell :: http://www.codesourcery.com :: CodeSourcery LLC nathan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx :: http://www.planetfall.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk
