错误：从 char 到 const char * 的转换无效

Question

I am facing this problem from day 1.

Actually, the book I am reading from has this program written in this way, but when I check it practically on Eclipse IDE, it does not work properly, always showing this error:

invalid conversion from char to const char *

Although I know what the issue is, I don't know how to resolve this problem, and I am facing this problem with every program in which there is some string operation.

The error is with this if statement:

if(,strcmp(str, *ptr[i]))

#include <iostream>
#include <cstring>
using namespace std;

int main()
{
    const char *ptr[10] = { "books", "television", "computer", "sports" };
    int i = 0;
    char str[25];
    cout << "\nEnter your favorite leisure pursuit here :" << "\n";
    cin >> str;
    for (i = 0; i < 4; i++)
    {
        if (!strcmp(str, *ptr[i]))
        {
            cout << "\n your favorite pursuit is available here " << endl;
            break;
        }
    }
    if (i == 4)
    {
        cout << "\n\nYour favorite leisure is not available here" << endl;
    }
    return 0;
}

Answer 1

strcmp() compares two null-terminated const char* strings. But, you are trying to compare a null-terminated char[] string to a single char , hence the error. This is because you are dereferencing the 2nd const char* string to access its 1st char element.

ptr is an array of const char* pointers, so you need to drop the extra * dereference operator when accessing ptr[i] , so that you compare the whole string, not just a single character of the string, eg:

if (strcmp(str, ptr[i]) == 0)