string literal string and immutable(char)* overload ambiguity

[Jonathan Marler]

On Tuesday, 31 July 2018 at 15:07:04 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer 
wrote:
> On 7/31/18 10:13 AM, Nicholas Wilson wrote:
>> is there any particular reason why
>> 
>> void foo(string a) {}
>> void foo(immutable(char)* b) {}
>> 
>> void bar()
>> {
>>      foo("baz");
>> }
>> 
>> result in
>> 
>> Error: foo called with argument types (string) matches both:
>> foo(string a)
>> and:
>> foo(immutable(char)* b)
>> 
>> especially given the pointer overload is almost always
>> void foo(immutable(char)* b)
>> {
>>      foo(b[0 .. strlen(b)]);
>> }
>> and if I really want to call the pointer variant I can with
>>      foo("baz".ptr);
>> but I can't call the string overload with a literal without 
>> creating a temp.
>> 
>> I think we should make string literals prefer string arguments.
>> 
>
> Absolutely, I didn't realize this was an ambiguity. It should 
> be the same as foo(long) vs. foo(int) with foo(1).
>
> -Steve

+1 for this

Although there is a solution for this today, i.e.

foo(cast(string)"baz");
foo("baz".ptr));

I see no reason why `string` shouldn't have precedence over 
`immutable(char)*`, especially since you can always explicitly 
choose the pointer variant with `.ptr.