Overloading does not work with user-defined structs when there are two overloaded functions receiving the struct (one by ref and one by value). struct MyStruct {} void fun(ref MyStruct a) {} void fun(MyStruct a) {} unittest { MyStruct a; fun(a); // fails both match } Tested with DMD32 D Compiler v2.057 which results in the error message: Error: function struct.fun called with argument types: ((MyStruct)) matches both: struct.fun(ref MyStruct a) and: struct.fun(MyStruct a) But fun(ref MyStruct a) is more specialized. Thus, it should win. The overloading protocol is defined in http://dlang.org/function.html section "Function Overloading" and in TDPL Section 5.5 "Overloading". Both description (though different in wording) specify the same behavior. It works for int. And I assume for other built-in types as well. But I haven't checked. I believe this issue is important. Because it is often needed (as an optimization to avoid the copy/move) for e.g. operator overloading.
This issue is a part of bug 5889.
*** This issue has been marked as a duplicate of issue 4843 ***