if-else statement for words

[kami06]

Hello Everyone :)
I am a beginner in c++ so i dont have much knowledge. I recently saw the tutorial video of "if-else statement" and everything worked fine when i was making a simple program. But why cant i express words in if statement?
Like:

  #include<iostream>
using namespace std;
int main ()
{
	int a;
	char finish;
	
	cout<<"Please type finish to end this program"<<endl;
	cin>>a;
	   if (a==finish)
	   { cout<<"Thank u for using our program"<<endl;
	   }
	
	else 
	{ cout<<"Please type finish only"<<endl;
	}
	

}

Now when I compile and run it, whenever i type any letter like a, b, c or any letter, it says"Thank You for using our program" which i stated if a=finish only. But when i type any number lilke 1,2 etc then i get the else statement.
so is there any way i can express words in if statement?

[koothkeeper]

You are putting what the user types in into an integer, which will not work. If you want the user to actually type the word "finish", then change a to be a string. Also, change the variable "finish" to also be a string and set the variable to the word "finish":

string finish = "finish";

[AbstractionAnon]

A couple problems with your program.

Line 9: a is an int. You can't store a a word in an int.

Line 6: finish is a n uninitialized character (it has a garbage value).

Line 10: You're trying to compare an int to an uninitialized character.

You want something like this:

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
using namespace std;
int main ()
{   string answer;
	
	cout<<"Please type finish to end this program"<<endl;
	cin >> answer;
	if (answer == "finish")  // note the quoted string literal
	{ cout<<"Thank u for using our program"<<endl;
	}	
	else 
	{ cout<<"Please type finish only"<<endl;
	}
}

Note: You probably want a loop in order to ask for the answer again if the answer is not "finish".