Question

How do I fix this error?

error C2668: ‘std::_Tree<_Traits>::end’ : ambiguous call to overloaded function

My code looks like this:

typedef map<int const *, float> my_map_t;
my_map_t _test;
my_map_t::const_iterator not_found = my_map_t::end();
if (_test.find(&iKeyValue) == not_found) {
    _test[iKeyValue] = 4 + 5; // not the actual code, but here for simplicity
}

The compiler complains that there’s an ambiguous call to my_map_t::end(). This makes sense, because the only difference is the return type.

Normally you can disambiguate the call by casting the parameters, but end() has no parameters. Any ideas?

Answer 1

From your code, it appears that my_map_t::end() is static (otherwise you’d have to call it on an instance, e.g. _test.end()). Edit: Jesse Beder is right in his comment to the question; the code doesn’t make much sense, since _test is a type, not an object.

Static member functions cannot be const-qualified (the const-qualification of a member function applies to the this pointer; static member functions have no this pointer).