The overload resolution rules only define a partial order on the set of all matches – if an overload F1 is not a better match than F2, it does not imply that F2 is a better match than F1. The exact partial order can be thought of as comparing two points in k dimensions, where … Read more
Is this a bug? Yes. Congratulations, you have found a bug in overload resolution. The bug reproduces in C# 4 and 5; it does not reproduce in the “Roslyn” version of the semantic analyzer. I’ve informed the C# 5 test team, and hopefully we can get this investigated and resolved before the final release. (As … Read more
When you call a.foo();, the compiler goes through overload resolution to find the best function to use. When it builds the overload set it finds void foo() const and void foo() Now, since a is not const, the non-const version is the best match, so the compiler picks void foo(). Then the access restrictions are … Read more