How to compare String to list of items in c - c

Question

I saw another post about similar code but they only compared the string to one other string was wondering if this works / if there's a simple more beginner-friendly way I should learn. Thank you
#include <cs50.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void)
{
string user_imput = get_string("Fruit or Vegetable?, ");
if (strcmp(user_imput, "apple"|| "blueberries" || "cherries" || "bananas" ||"grapes" || "oranges" || "watermelon" ||"lemons" == 0));
{
printf("Fuit!, %s\n", user_imput);
}
else if (strcmp(user_imput, "potatoes" || "tomatoe" || "onions" || "carrot" || "bellpepper" || "lettuce" || "cucumbers" || "broccoli" == 0));
{
printf("Vegtable! %s\n", user_imput);
}
else
{
printf("NA");
}
}```

Answer 1

An easy way to do this is to create a function which searches through an array containing your strings. You then loop through comparing each one individually. If found, we return a truthy value right away. If the loop runs its course and finds nothing, we return a falsy value afterwards.
int is_fruit(string food) {
static const string fruits[] = {
"apple", "blueberries", "cherries" /* ... */
};
for (size_t i = 0; i < (sizeof fruits / sizeof fruits[0]); i++)
if (strcmp(fruits[i], food) == 0)
return 1;
return 0;
}
Then your if ... else looks something like:
if (is_fruit(user_input)) {
/* ... */
} else if (is_vegetable(user_input)) {
/* ... */
} else {
/* ... */
}
A good exercise would be to complete the function above (fill out the array), and write a similar one for vegetables. An even better exercise would be to wring a more generic function that takes a string and any array of strings, and deciding if the array contains the string. Its function prototype would look like this:
int string_array_contains(const string array[], size_t length, const string s);
It would work very similarly to the function above, except you would have to pass in the length of the array, since sizeof cannot be used to determine the length of the array argument.
If functions and arrays are too advanced for you at the moment, then simply know that you must compare each string individually using strcmp. Writing this by hand leads to very long, hard to maintain code:
if (strcmp(user_input, "apple") == 0 || strcmp(user_input, "blueberries") == 0 /* ... */) {
/* ... */
}