How to store a char array (or part of it) into const char*?

byMR

August 6, 2023

I’m new to C++, and I’m having trouble to concatenate a const char* with a char aray.

First, I’d like to ask a question: Is const char* the same as std::string?

And going straight to my problem, this is what I’m trying:

I have this 10 sized char array that contains letters from a to j:

char my_array[10] = {'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', j};

And I want to store this array (or part of it), using a const char*. But I could not do the concatenation, I thought it would be some think like this:

    const char* group_of_letters = "\0";
    
    for(int i = 0; i <= 9; i++){
        group_of_letters += my_array[i];
    }

I’d like to use the for loop because I’ll need it on my real project to store defined intervals of that array into the const char*
But it didn’t work any way that I have tried.

If it helps, my complete code would look like this:

#include <iostream>

int main(){
    
    char my_array[10] = {'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j'};
    const char* group_of_letters = "\0";
    
    for(int i = 0; i <= 9; i++){
        group_of_letters += my_array[i];
    }
    
    std::cout << group_of_letters;
    
    return 0;
}

->Using Dev C++ 5.11 – 06/08/2023

>Solution :

First, I’d like to ask a question: Is const char* the same as std::string?

No they are not the same, const char* is a pointer to a character sequence in C-style strings, while std::string is a C++ class that manages and manipulates strings with automatic memory management.

You can’t concatenate a char* array using the + operator.

In you case it’s better to use std::string as below :

#include <iostream>
#include <string>

int main(){
    
    char my_array[10] = {'a', 'b', 'c', 'd', 'e', 'f', 'g', 'h', 'i', 'j'};
    std::string group_of_letters;
    
    for(int i = 0; i <= 9; i++){
        group_of_letters += my_array[i];
    }
    
    std::cout << group_of_letters << std::endl;
    
    return 0;
}