I understand that char a[] = "Hello World"; works, but I was wondering if there was a way that you could have the array of characters initialized by a string inputed at run-time.
For example:
string word;
cout << "Enter a word ";
cin >> word;
char a[] = word;
I know that clang++ does not accept this because it says, "array initializer must be an initializer list or string literal".
Is there a work around for this without using pointers?
Use c_str.
http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/string/basic_string/c_str
And something like this to copy to array:
strcpy(a, word.c_str());
you can create an array of characters with some fixed size like what we used in structs: char name[100]... then input string and then use strpy to copy.
char a[100];
string word;
cout << "Enter a word ";
cin >> word;
strcpy(a, word.c_str());
the code above works fine but the problem is if the user inters a text larger than 100 character then you'll UB.
in fact a stack array must have a constant size at compile time whereas a string can change the size at runtime which means you cannot do that but there's an alternative where you create a dynamic array depending on the runtime size of the string then use strcpy():
string word;
cout << "Enter a word ";
cin >> word;
char* a = new char[word.length() + 1]; // 1 for Null character
strcpy(a, word.c_str());
delete[] a;
another alternative which is my favorite is to use std::vector<char>:
vector<char> a;
char c;
while(SomeConditionIsTrue){
cin >> c;
a.push_back(c);
}
for(int i(0); i < a.size(); i++)
cout << a[i];
std::vector has a constructor that accepts two iterators. You should have recommended that.new char[]. It doesn't do the same thing as a local array.
std::vector<char>. Which is basicallystd::string.std::string? It gives you access to its internal character array.