optionparse: how to add a line break to the help text

[Rafael Durán Castañeda]

On 10/09/11 22:43, Gelonida N wrote:
> I'm having a small question about optionparse.
>
> Normaly optionparser will format the help text according to the
> console's width.
>
> I just wondered if there is any way to insert a line breakk into an
> options help text.
>
> Example:
>
> from optparse import OptionParser
>
> parser = OptionParser()
> parser.add_option("-f", action="store",
>      help="This option is really really complicated"
>           " and I'd like to write"
>           " a few paragrpahs to explain how it works."
>           "\nHowever the line breaks are stripped off"
>           " and it's thus difficult to structure the help text")
>
> args = ['-h']
> parser.parse_args(args)
>
> Is there any trick to force a new paragraph/ line break before the word
> 'However'?
>
>
> Thanks in advance for suggestions.
>
>
You can use """ for multiple line texts:
 >>> text = \
... """fsdfsfsdfsdf
...     sfsdfsfsdf
... sdfsdf  s
...
... """
 >>> text
'fsdfsfsdfsdf\n    sfsdfsfsdf\nsdfsdf  s\n\n'