Thread: Help using strcpy for arrays

Well this is my first attempt at receiving help from the community. I am currently a Computer Science major at a University and am in my second semester. My current teacher has not been of much help outside of the class so I am hoping this community can.

Before the haters come at me, this is an assignment, but I am not asking for the assignment to be done for me. I am merely asking a question about an error I'm receiving. I want to understand what's going wrong, not have it done for me.

I am attempting to assign "randomChoice" as the array index of the "listOfWords" array then copy "listOfWords[randomChoice] to "selectedWord". I am not sure if it is that I do not fully understand the use of strcopy() or something wrong with my arrays. Hopefully you guys can help!

This is my error:

Code:

hangman.cc: In function ‘void SelectWord(char (*)[80], int, char*):
hangman.cc:84: error: invalid conversion from 'char' to 'const char*'

And my code:

Code:

#include <iostream>#include <fstream>
#include <cstdlib>
#include <cassert>
#include <cstring>


using namespace std;


//Global constants
const int MAX_WORDS = 80;
const int MAX_USED = 80;




//Function Declarations
    void ReadWords (char listOfWords[][MAX_USED], int numOfWords, ifstream& inFile);
    void SelectWord (char listOfWords[MAX_WORDS][MAX_USED], int numOfWords, char selectedWord[MAX_WORDS]);


    




//Call the functions to use in the program
int main (int argc, char *argv[])
{
    char listOfWords[MAX_WORDS][MAX_USED];
    int numOfWords;
    char selectedWord[MAX_WORDS];
    
    ifstream inFile;
    srand(time(0));


    inFile.open(argv[1]);        //Open file
    assert(inFile);                //Check if file opened correctly
    
    
    //Function Calls
    ReadWords (listOfWords, numOfWords, inFile);
    SelectWord (listOfWords, numOfWords, selectedWord);
    
    
}


//Function will read in words from data file into a 2D array
void ReadWords (char listOfWords[MAX_WORDS][MAX_USED], int numOfWords, ifstream& inFile)    
{
    
    numOfWords = 0;
    
    while ((inFile.peek() != EOF) && (numOfWords < MAX_WORDS))
    {
        inFile.getline (listOfWords[numOfWords], 100, '\n');
        numOfWords++;
    }
    
    //Debugging - Array content check
    /*
    for(int i = 0; i < numOfWords; i++)
    {    
        cout << listOfWords[i] << endl;
    }
    */
}




void SelectWord (char listOfWords[MAX_WORDS][MAX_USED], int numOfWords, char selectedWord[MAX_WORDS])
{
    int randomChoice;
    randomChoice = rand()%numOfWords;
    char i;
    //Debugging - Generating random number check
    //cout << randomChoice << endl;
    
    strcpy(listOfWords[randomChoice], selectedWord[numOfWords]);
}

Thanks for the help. ronin helped me fixed the problem and C_ntua also provided some useful information. Salem...I'm in the same boat you are from looking at my code. What I am being taught has not once been distinguished from C++ to C. I had been led to believe it was C++ all along but from reading things from the textbook and forums, it seems there are multiple things coming from C also. I agree with what you're saying, I have a feeling this is something I will have to learn for myself because the professor is not distinguishing the difference.