Hidden away in distutils.fancy_getopt is an exceedingly handy function called wrap_text(). It does just what you might expect from the name: def wrap_text (text, width): """wrap_text(text : string, width : int) -> [string] Split 'text' into multiple lines of no more than 'width' characters each, and return the list of strings that results. """ Surprise surprise, Optik uses this. I've never been terribly happy about importing it from distutils.fancy_getopt, and putting Optik into the standard library as OptionParser is a great opportunity for putting wrap_text somewhere more sensible. I happen to think that wrap_text() is useful for more than just auto-formatting --help messages, so hiding it away in OptionParser.py doesn't seem right. Also, Perl has a Text::Wrap module that's been part of the standard library for not-quite-forever -- so shouln't Python have one too? Proposal: a new standard library module, wrap_text, which combines the best of distutils.fancy_getopt.wrap_text() and Text::Wrap. Right now, I'm thinking of an interface something like this: wrap(text : string, width : int) -> [string] Split 'text' into multiple lines of no more than 'width' characters each, and return the list of strings that results. Tabs in 'text' are expanded with string.expandtabs(), and all other whitespace characters (including newline) are converted to space. [This is identical to distutils.fancy_getopt.wrap_text(), but the docstring is more complete.] wrap_nomunge(text : string, width : int) -> [string] Same as wrap(), without munging whitespace. [Not sure if this is really useful to expose publicly. Opinions?] fill(text : string, width : int, initial_tab : string = "", subsequent_tab : string = "") -> string Reformat the paragraph in 'text' to fit in lines of no more than 'width' columns. The first line is prefixed with 'initial_tab', and subsequent lines are prefixed with 'subsequent_tab'; the lengths of the tab strings are accounted for when wrapping lines to fit in 'width' columns. [This is just a glorified "\n".join(wrap(...)); the idea to add initial_tab and subsequent_tab was stolen from Perl's Text::Wrap.] I'll go whip up some code and submit a patch to SF. If people like it, I'll even write some tests and documentation too. Greg -- Greg Ward - Unix nerd gward@python.net http://starship.python.net/~gward/ Support bacteria -- it's the only culture some people have!