dialogue generation

[fox35]

I am very new to the c language which I am utilizing with a pic16F690 chip. Due to my inexperience coding I am uncertain where to start with certain procedures I would like to implement towards an analog to digital system capable of intelligent dialogue behaviors. I would be satisfied generating a program that could read light pulses for a period of time and then compare them to an internal database which outputs stored responses based on the comparison. To begin, processing simple arithmetic problems intput with light pulses would be great. My problem is I am unsure what to utilize in the laguage to for instance, generate a referenceable database or to establish a pulse reading system that would understand a data stream was completed sent by the end signal of the stream as in morse code. Any suggestions, pointers to functions in the ccs libraries would be a great help. Thanks.