Hi François, > But why should this prevent from calling a const method ? Because it's a non-const pointer, and there is a non-const method which is an exact unambiguous signature match, and that non-const method has protected accessibility. Add a const_instance method that returns a const pointer, and then use that. Or don't overload the same method name with different accessibility. Or don't overload the same method name at all, rather have different named methods. (This is the option that I think is best, because it is obvious to me that the two methods are not conceptually the "same thing" for which overloading is appropriate. They are different things, strongly indicated by them having different accessibility.) HTH, --Eljay
