I have a function template, where I want to do perfect forwarding into a lambda that I run on another thread. Here is a minimal test case which you can directly compile: #include <thread> #include <future> #include <utility> #include <iostream> #include <vector> /** * Function template that does perfect forwarding to a lambda inside an * async call (or at least tries to). I want both instantiations of the * function to work (one for lvalue references T&, and rvalue reference T&&). * However, I cannot get the code to compile when calling it with an lvalue. * See main() below. */ template <typename T> std::string accessValueAsync(T&& obj) { std::future<std::string> fut = std::async(std::launch::async, [](T&& vec) mutable { return vec[0]; }, std::forward<T>(obj)); return fut.get(); } int main(int argc, char const *argv[]) { std::vector<std::string> lvalue{"Testing"}; // calling with what I assume is an lvalue reference does NOT compile std::cout << accessValueAsync(lvalue) << std::endl; // calling with rvalue reference compiles std::cout << accessValueAsync(std::move(lvalue)) << std::endl; // I want both to compile. return 0; } For the non-compiling case, here is the last line of the error message which is intelligible: main.cpp|13 col 29| note: no known conversion for argument 1 from ‘std::vector<std::basic_string<char> >’ to ‘std::vector<std::basic_string<char> >&’ I have a feeling it may have something to do with how T&& is deduced, but I can't pinpoint the exact point of failure and fix it. Any suggestions? Thank you! EDIT: I am using gcc 4.7.0 just in case this could be a compiler issue (probably not)