Question

I have written the following code which will does not work but the second snippet will when I change it.

int main( int argc, char *argv[] )
{
  if( argv[ 1 ] == "-i" )   //This is what does not work
     //Do Something
}

But if I write the code like so this will work.

int main( int argc, char *argv[] )
{
  string opti = "-i";

  if( argv[ 1 ] == opti )   //This is what does work
     //Do Something
}

Is it because the string class has == as an overloaded member and hence can perform this action?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Is it because the string class has == as an overloaded member and hence can perform this action?

You are correct. Regular values of type char * do not have overloaded operators. To compare C strings,

if (strcmp(argv[1], "-i") == 0) {
    ...
}

By comparing the strings the way you did (with == directly), you are comparing the values of the pointers. Since "-i" is a compile time constant and argv[1] is something else, they will never be equal.