Very Confused about this....

Ok basicly what im trying to do is brainstorm the best way to go about loading functions from a file... for example
Say you load a level file into your game (The game is an RPG by the way ) you talk to a person in that level and they could do a range of differernt actions...

This is the best idea iv'e had so far in getting this to work

Code:

class sprite
{ public:

int function[];
int string textarguments[]
int numberarguments[][]
};

and then something like...

Code:

sprite person[10];
if( user presses action key)
{
   switch(person[0].function[x])
   {
       case '1':
       a_function(person[0].textarguments[x])
       break;

       case '2':
       another_function(person[0].numberrguments[x][y1], person[0]numberarguments[x][y2]);
       break;

       }//end of switch
}//end of if

however this seems like a very messy, wastefull and confusing way to go about things as there would be alot of unused elements of the arrays

Is there a better way to go about this? Have I explained this well enough?

I'd suggest using a scripting language, but hey, that's just me.

Lua
Python
GameMonkey Script

Or you can write the functions and assign them some key that you call from the file. And 'switch' through them. But, like bernt, i would go with lua or python.