C++ Primer Plus

Comparing C-Style Strings

Suppose you want to see if a string in a character array is the word mate. If word is the array name, the following test might not do what you think it should do:

word == "mate"

Remember that the name of an array is a synonym for its address. Similarly, a quoted string constant is a synonym for its address. Thus, the preceding relational expression doesn’t test whether the strings are the same; it checks whether they are stored at the same address. The answer to that is no, even if the two strings have the same characters.

Because C++ handles C-style strings as addresses, you get little satisfaction if you try to use the relational operators to compare strings. Instead, you can go to the C-style string library and use ...