13 Overloading [over]

13.4 Address of overloaded function [over.over]

A use of an overloaded function name without arguments is resolved in certain contexts to a function, a pointer to function or a pointer to member function for a specific function from the overload set. A function template name is considered to name a set of overloaded functions in such contexts. The function selected is the one whose type is identical to the function type of the target type required in the context. [ Note: That is, the class of which the function is a member is ignored when matching a pointer-to-member-function type.  — end note ] The target can be

The overloaded function name can be preceded by the & operator. An overloaded function name shall not be used without arguments in contexts other than those listed. [ Note: Any redundant set of parentheses surrounding the overloaded function name is ignored ([expr.prim]).  — end note ]

If the name is a function template, template argument deduction is done ([temp.deduct.funcaddr]), and if the argument deduction succeeds, the resulting template argument list is used to generate a single function template specialization, which is added to the set of overloaded functions considered. [ Note: As described in [temp.arg.explicit], if deduction fails and the function template name is followed by an explicit template argument list, the template-id is then examined to see whether it identifies a single function template specialization. If it does, the template-id is considered to be an lvalue for that function template specialization. The target type is not used in that determination.  — end note ]

Non-member functions and static member functions match targets of type “pointer-to-function” or “reference-to-function.” Nonstatic member functions match targets of type “pointer-to-member-function”. If a non-static member function is selected, the reference to the overloaded function name is required to have the form of a pointer to member as described in [expr.unary.op].

If more than one function is selected, any function template specializations in the set are eliminated if the set also contains a non-template function, and any given function template specialization F1 is eliminated if the set contains a second function template specialization whose function template is more specialized than the function template of F1 according to the partial ordering rules of [temp.func.order]. After such eliminations, if any, there shall remain exactly one selected function.

Example:

int f(double);
int f(int);
int (*pfd)(double) = &f;        // selects f(double)
int (*pfi)(int) = &f;           // selects f(int)
int (*pfe)(...) = &f;           // error: type mismatch
int (&rfi)(int) = f;            // selects f(int)
int (&rfd)(double) = f;         // selects f(double)
void g() {
  (int (*)(int))&f;             // cast expression as selector
}

The initialization of pfe is ill-formed because no f() with type int(...) has been declared, and not because of any ambiguity. For another example,

struct X {
  int f(int);
  static int f(long);
};

int (X::*p1)(int)  = &X::f;     // OK
int    (*p2)(int)  = &X::f;     // error: mismatch
int    (*p3)(long) = &X::f;     // OK
int (X::*p4)(long) = &X::f;     // error: mismatch
int (X::*p5)(int)  = &(X::f);   // error: wrong syntax for
                                // pointer to member
int    (*p6)(long) = &(X::f);   // OK

 — end example ]

Note: If f() and g() are both overloaded functions, the cross product of possibilities must be considered to resolve f(&g), or the equivalent expression f(g).  — end note ]

Note: There are no standard conversions (Clause [conv]) of one pointer-to-function type into another. In particular, even if B is a public base of D, we have

D* f();
B* (*p1)() = &f;                // error

void g(D*);
void (*p2)(B*) = &g;            // error

 — end note ]