Comparing C strings with initialized string array [closed]

First, your data declaration is wrong. You don't want an array of char, you want an array of strings, either std::string or char const* (the latter only if all of the strings are literals). Secondly, you probably don't want the table to be an auto variable; unless you want to modify it later in the function, and reinitializing it each time the function is called, you probably want it to be static:

static char const* const list[] =
{
    "Becky Warren, 555-1223",
    "Joe Looney, 555-0097",
    "Geri Palmer, 555-8787",
    "Lynn Presnell, 555-8878", 
    "Holly Gaddis, 555-8878", 
    "Sam Wiggins, 555-0998",
    "Bob Kain, 555-8712",
    "Tim Haynes, 555-7676",
    "Warren Gaddis, 555-9037",
    "Jean James, 555-4939",
    "Ron Palmer, 555-2783",
};

Otherwise, you want to use std::vector and std::string, with something like the above to initialize it:

std::vector<std::string> localList( std::begin( list ),
                                    std::end( list ) );

(For your example code, this isn't necessary. You can just use list.)

Second, you should use the free function std::getline, and read into an std::string, so you don't have to worry about size. And I don't think you want the cin.ignore(). This will try to extract (and ignore) one extra character after the new line, and will probably require entering an additional new line (since the system won't send any characters to your program until there is a new line).

And you don't want to use an explicit number of elements to manage the loop, but rather something derived from the size of the array itself; iterators would be the most generic:

for ( char const* const* iter = std::begin( list );
        iter != std::end( list );
        ++ iter ) {
    if ( std::search( *iter, *iter + strlen( *iter ),
                      name.begin(), name.end() )
            != *iter + strlen( *iter ) ) {
        std::cout << *iter << std::endl;
}

This is, of course, case sensitive; in a real application, you'd probably write your own matcher (a functional object), which would implement the exact matching criteria; similarly, you would use std::find_if, something like:

Matcher m( name );
char const* const* iter = std::find_if(
                    std::begin( list ), std::end( list ), m );
while ( iter != std::end( list ) ) {
    std::cout << *iter << std::endl;
    iter = std::find_if( iter + 1, std::end( list ), m );
}

Minor modifications done to suit my compiler, this code works. Corrected declaration of 2 dimensional char list . Running here with hardcoded input : http://codepad.org/ZVkbLjHU

  #include <iostream>
  #include <cstring>
  #include <string>
  using namespace std;

int main(int argc)
{
  const int size = 50;
  char name[50];
  int count;
  char list[][50] = {"Becky Warren, 555-1223",
                 "Joe Looney, 555-0097",
                 "Geri Palmer, 555-8787",
                 "Lynn Presnell, 555-8878",
                 "Holly Gaddis, 555-8878",
                 "Sam Wiggins, 555-0998",
                 "Bob Kain, 555-8712",
                 "Tim Haynes, 555-7676",
                 "Warren Gaddis, 555-9037",
                 "Jean James, 555-4939",
                 "Ron Palmer, 555-2783" };

  cout << "Enter a name or partial name: " << endl;
  cin.getline(name, size);
  cin.ignore();
  for(count = 0; count < 10 ; count++){
    if(strstr(list[count], name)){
      cout << list[count];
    }
  }
  cin.get();
  return 0;
}