What are the pitfalls of ADL?

There is a huge problem with argument-dependent lookup. Consider, for example, the following utility:

#include <iostream>

namespace utility
{
    template <typename T>
    void print(T x)
    {
        std::cout << x << std::endl;
    }

    template <typename T>
    void print_n(T x, unsigned n)
    {
        for (unsigned i = 0; i < n; ++i)
            print(x);
    }
}

It’s simple enough, right? We can call print_n() and pass it any object and it will call print to print the object n times.

Actually, it turns out that if we only look at this code, we have absolutely no idea what function will be called by print_n. It might be the print function template given here, but it might not be. Why? Argument-dependent lookup.

As an example, let’s say you have written a class to represent a unicorn. For some reason, you’ve also defined a function named print (what a coincidence!) that just causes the program to crash by writing to a dereferenced null pointer (who knows why you did this; that’s not important):

namespace my_stuff
{
    struct unicorn { /* unicorn stuff goes here */ };

    std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& os, unicorn x) { return os; }

    // Don't ever call this!  It just crashes!  I don't know why I wrote it!
    void print(unicorn) { *(int*)0 = 42; }
}

Next, you write a little program that creates a unicorn and prints it four times:

int main()
{
    my_stuff::unicorn x;
    utility::print_n(x, 4);
}

You compile this program, run it, and… it crashes. “What?! No way,” you say: “I just called print_n, which calls the print function to print the unicorn four times!” Yes, that’s true, but it hasn’t called the print function you expected it to call. It’s called my_stuff::print.

Why is my_stuff::print selected? During name lookup, the compiler sees that the argument to the call to print is of type unicorn, which is a class type that is declared in the namespace my_stuff.

Because of argument-dependent lookup, the compiler includes this namespace in its search for candidate functions named print. It finds my_stuff::print, which is then selected as the best viable candidate during overload resolution: no conversion is required to call either of the candidate print functions and nontemplate functions are preferred to function templates, so the nontemplate function my_stuff::print is the best match.

(If you don’t believe this, you can compile the code in this question as-is and see ADL in action.)

Yes, argument-dependent lookup is an important feature of C++. It is essentially required to achieve the desired behavior of some language features like overloaded operators (consider the streams library). That said, it’s also very, very flawed and can lead to really ugly problems. There have been several proposals to fix argument-dependent lookup, but none of them have been accepted by the C++ standards committee.