I've been trying to call the overloaded table::scan_index(std::string, ...) member function without success. For the sake of clarity, I have stripped out all non-relevant code. I have a class called table which has an overloaded/templated member function named scan_index() in order to handle strings as a special case. class table : boost::noncopyable { public: template <typename T> void scan_index(T val, std::function<bool (uint recno, T val)> callback) { // code } void scan_index(std::string val, std::function<bool (uint recno, std::string val)> callback) { // code } }; Then there is a hitlist class which has a number of templated member functions which call table::scan_index(T, ...) class hitlist { public: template <typename T> void eq(uint fieldno, T value) { table* index_table = db.get_index_table(fieldno); // code index_table->scan_index<T>(value, [&](uint recno, T n)->bool { // code }); } }; And, finally, the code which kicks it all off: hitlist hl; // code hl.eq<std::string>(*fieldno, p1.to_string()); The problem is that instead of calling table::scan_index(std::string, ...), it calls the templated version. I have tried using both overloading (as shown above) and a specialized function template (below), but nothing seems to work. After staring at this code for a few hours, I feel like I'm missing something obvious. Any ideas? template <> void scan_index<std::string>(std::string val, std::function<bool (uint recno, std::string val)> callback) { // code }