For the code, no... Firstly, a string in C is a set of two or more characters, so you must take a pointer to the first element of the array for the strings. And since the function don't modify the strings, they should be const char*, even.
A 2D array can't be passed as an array of pointers... You want to make it accept a 2D array (an array of strings) instead. Do this by const char array[][y] (note that the "y" size must be specified or it won't work).
And as for the loop... more common for this type of thing is for loop.
And then there's the if... You are using bitwise OR (|) instead of logical OR (||).
And you probably want to work on your indentation.

As for the question, no. The compilers don't care if you have projects or not. An IDE might care, though.
But you might create a temp or test project where you experiment with stuff instead of creating new projects all the time. That works quite well.