Ndtyjky

I am trying to learn c++ and one of the assignments is to ask the user for a letter - then ask for a string of text and count how many times the 1st letter is repeated in the string of text.

I have written some code that successfully gets to the point of asking for the letter & the string of text - I can display both

I can traverse the string of text counting how many letters there are in the string. When I try to add an if check to compare the current letter in the string inside the loop with the letter 1st asked for - I get this compile error:

error: ISO C++ forbids comparison between pointer and integer [-fpermissive] 

if (textToCount[i] == letterToCount)

this is the full code I have written

char getLetterToCount(char letterToCount);

char getTextToCount(char textToCount);

int countLetters(char letterToCount, char textToCount);



int main()

{

   char letterToCount[1];

   getLetterToCount(letterToCount);

   char textToCount[256];

   cin.ignore();

   getTextToCount(textToCount);

   countLetters(letterToCount, textToCount);

   return 0;

}



char getLetterToCount(char letterToCount)

{

   cout <<  "Enter a letter: ";

   cin >>  letterToCount;

}



char getTextToCount(char textToCount)

{

   cout <<  "Enter text: ";

   cin.getline(textToCount, 256);

}



int countLetters(char letterToCount, char textToCount)

{

   int numChrsInString = 0;

   int numTimesChrtoCountrepeated = 0;

   for (int i = 0; textToCount[i] != ''; i++)

   {

      if (textToCount[i] == letterToCount)

      {

         numTimesChrtoCountrepeated++;

      }

   }

   cout << "num chrs in string: "

        << numChrsInString

        << "num times chr counted: "

        << numTimesChrtoCountrepeated

        << endl;

}

I did a fair bit of output to try and figure out what was wrong with these - I pulled the code for that out because it made it a bit more confusing.

BUT the compile error explains what is wrong, I just don't understand why it is wrong because the things I am trying to compare are BOTH text letters...

It would be great if someone who knows c++ can explain what I am doing wrong

You are comparing a char with a pointer to char
Use:

if (textToCount[i] == letterToCount[0])

                                   ~~~

^{Note: There are few obvious nitpicking but above is the main compiler error cause}

In C++, arrays are pointers. C++ considers lettertocount to be a pointer because you're passing it as an array. You don't want to pass that; you want to pass just a character:

int countLetters(char letterToCount, char textToCount)

A bigger question to my mind is, why do you think you have to pass lettertocount as an array? Apparently it's just one letter. When you invoke this function do you eventually want to count multiple letters?