Case label does not reduce to an integer constant in C?

Question

I am working on a game and I ran my code and got the error "case label does not reduce to an integer constant." I think I know what this means, but how do I fix it? Here is my code:

#include<stdio.h>
#include<stdlib.h

int player_cash[3] = {50};
char job[][20] {
    'A',
    'B',
    'C',
    "Donate",
    "Go to work",
    "Exit"
};
int jobs;

int main()
{
    while(player_cash[0] > 0) {
        printf("Please type A, B, C, Donate, Go to work, or Exit\n");
        switch(jobs) {

            case 'A':
            player_cash[0]-=5;
            player_cash[1]+=5;
            printf("Cash=%i\n\n", player_cash[0]);
            continue;

            case 'B':
            player_cash[0]-=5;
            player_cash[2]+=5;
            printf("Cash=%i\n\n", player_cash[0]);
            continue;

            case 'C':
            player_cash[0]-=5;
            player_cash[3]+=5;
            printf("Cash=%i\n\n", player_cash[0]);
            continue;

            case "Donate":
            player_cash[0]-=15; //Error here
            player_cash[1]+=5;
            player_cash[2]+=5;
            player_cash[3]+=5;
            printf("Cash donated\n\n");
            printf("Cash=%i\n\n", player_cash[0]);
            continue;

            case "Go to work":
            player_cash[0]+=10; //Error here
            printf("Work done\n\n");
            printf("Cash=%i\n\n", player_cash[0]);
            continue;

            case "Exit":
            printf("Thanks for playing!\n\n"); //Error here
            break;

            default:
            printf("Does not compute");
            continue;
        }
    }
        getchar();
        return 0;
}

So, what I want the user to do is type in one of the options, and do the action that corresponds with it. How do I fix this?

Answer 1

You can't use strings as case expressions:

case "Donate":

Only integral expressions can be used, so e.g. case 'A': is OK.

Conceptually you have problems: jobs is an int, and you're testing for strings. If you want to allow the user to enter strings (more than a single character), you'll need to keep a string variable, and use something like fgets to get a full line of input.

Answer 2

Some of your case labels are characters (type char, indicated with 's). Those are integer constants.

Other labels are string literals (indicated with ") which have an effective type of const char *.¹ Those are not integer constants and can not be used in this way.

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¹ For historical reasons they can often be used as if they were char *, but don't try to change them. Or else.