How to convert a string to char

Question

I am in a beginners programming class and for our assignment we are asked to convert a string of letters/words to braille. For some reason I cannot seem to figure out how to make my string separate my input and output each character that is associated with its braille definition.

Here is a portion of my code:

#include <iostream>
#include <cstring>
using namespace std;
int main(){

    string str1;
    getline(cin, str1);

int n = str1.length();
char cstr[n + 1];
strcpy(cstr, str1.c_str());

   if( cstr == 'a')
       cout << "|--|\n|* |\n|  |\n|  |\n|--|";
   if( cstr == 'b')
       cout << "|--|\n|* |\n|* |\n|  |\n|--|";
}

I have tried looking up different ways online to convert strings to char. However, none of them seem to work on my code. I keep receiving the message:error: ISO C++ forbids comparison between pointer and integer [-fpermissive]
I have no idea how to fix this issue. Any help would be appreciated.

Note: This is not my complete code. I just wanted to show the part that is giving me problems.

Answer 1

You don't need the temporary C-style string array cstr, all you need to do is use a range-based for loop to loop over each character in str1:

for (char c : str1)
{
    switch (c)
    {
    case 'a':
        cout << "|--|\n|* |\n|  |\n|  |\n|--|";
        break;

    // etc. for the remaining characters...
    }
}

---

If you're not allowed to use range-based for loops, then you can use iterators:

for (auto it = str1.begin(); it != str1.end(); ++it)
{
    char c = *it;

    // ...
}

Or old-school index iteration:

for (size_t i = 0; i < str1.length(); ++i)
{
    char c = str1[i];

    // ...
}

Any good book (or really any beginners book at all, even bad ones), tutorial or class should have shown at least one of the above.