Thread: Passing parameters between templated functions

I am having trouble getting a template function to recognise that it has been passed a reference by a calling template function. This example code demonstrates the problem.

Code:

template<typename T>outputData<T data>
{
    cout<<data<<endl;
}

template<typename T>displayData<T data>
{
    outputData(data)
}

int main()
{
    string name("Muppet");
    string &reference=name;

    displayData(reference);
}

The problem is that the failure to recognise that a string reference is passed through the template functions, is causing the string copy constructor to be called. This is hitting performance.

Do I have to explicitly declare overrides of the template functions that explicity declare reference arguments? I think this will likley yield ambiguity when the compiler tries to resolve which override of a template to use to generate the explicit vrsion of the code to match the arguments passed.