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

[Rhodri James]

On Sat, 10 Sep 2011 23:16:42 +0100, Rafael Durán Castañeda  
<rafadurancastaneda at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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'

Unfortunately the help text is formatted using textwrap, which presumes  
that the entire text is a single paragraph.  To get paragraphs in the help  
text, you'll need to write an IndentedHelpFormatter subclass that splits  
the text on "\n\n", textwraps the split string individually, then re-joins  
them.  _format_text() and format_option() look like the methods that would  
need replacing.

-- 
Rhodri James *-* Wildebeest Herder to the Masses