strcmp conversion from ‘char’ to ‘const char*’

Question

I'm having a problem with strcmp.

This is my code.

while (strcmp("m",wood) !=0 || strcmp("j",wood) !=0 || strcmp("o",wood) !=0){
    cout << "(m for mahogany, o for oak, or p for pine): ";
cin >> wood;
}

And this is my error:

dining.cpp: In member function ‘void DiningSet::woodType()’:
dining.cpp:76:24: error: invalid conversion from ‘char’ to ‘const char*’ [-fpermissive]
/usr/include/string.h:143:12: error:   initialising argument 2 of ‘int strcmp(const char*, const char*)’ [-fpermissive]
dining.cpp:76:48: error: invalid conversion from ‘char’ to ‘const char*’ [-fpermissive]
/usr/include/string.h:143:12: error:   initialising argument 2 of ‘int strcmp(const char*, const char*)’ [-fpermissive]
dining.cpp:76:72: error: invalid conversion from ‘char’ to ‘const char*’ [-fpermissive]
/usr/include/string.h:143:12: error:   initialising argument 2 of ‘int strcmp(const char*, const char*)’ [-fpermissive]

Solution

wood is of type char: it must be a string, ie, char*, to be used in strcmp().

Change to:

while ('m' != wood && 'j' != wood && 'o' != wood)

Comments

[Alok Save]

This answer is correct, @Daniel D C, add to that what my comment says under the Q for better understanding.

[T I]

@DanielDC I think take a look at char and string literals in addition too the answer :)

[Daniel Del Core]

Thanks guys ! appreciate the quick response !

[zszen]

char compare only use "==" and with single char include with " ' "