Stripping Strings

I have a file called "words.txt" that holds 500+ words. A 5-letter word is chosen at random from the file. I need to be able to handle each letter individually. How would I strip the full word into multiple 1 letter strings?

make a 1D array with 5 strings. Then for loop through the original string and stick letters in the strings. I forgot how to create arrays cuz im using C++/irrlicht now, but:

For i=0 to 4
 arr$(i)=Mid(orig$,i,1)
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