Very fortunately auto ref prevents overloading. After a post on HN that get very little interest0 I've found that the D language is able to monomorphize a function template in a way that's very unexpected, or at least unspecified:

auto ref T max(T)(auto ref T u, auto ref T v) => u > v ? u : v;

void main()
{
    int a = 1;
    int b = 0;
    int x;

    // lvalue version
    assert(&max(a,b) is &a);
    // rvalue version
    assert(max(a,0) == a);
}

so at some point you have to imagine me trying this code, because "it's not sure if that will work".

Not very interesting you would say. Indeed when a problem is resolved you just dont even think it can exist.

On Wednesday, 22 October 2025 at 05:23:27 UTC, user1234 wrote:

what?
https://dlang.org/spec/function.html#auto-ref-functions
https://dlang.org/spec/template.html#auto-ref-parameters

The one of the examples is a max function.