How the fuck do you make a text adventure?

More specifically how the fuck do you handle inputs for a text adventure where the player can input anything they want?

Read SICP then take a masters course in computational linguistics.

Try reading up on z-code and looking at e.g. Inform.

maybe a trie with valid strings as keys...perhaps one trie per room..,  and if not matched to room trie then fall back to global trie...

the content at a point in the trie is some kind of action id/class that says what to do... that way you can it multiple times to the trie with slightly different keys (input strings) to cover people spelling things differently or saying something that means the same as what you intended.

Seconding Inform.

>>1

I'm using a shell command with options type of deal. Every command with option combination has a help option, so it should be alright for those that have used shells.