Formated String in optparse

[Peter Otten]

Norbert Thek wrote:

> Is there an easy way to convince optparse to accept newline in the
> helpstring? and more importand also in the 'desc' string. I tried
> everything
> (from the os.linesep) to \n, \r,  \r\n, ...

The "official" way (write your own Formatter class) is a bit tedious indeed.
Here's a hack that seems to work:

import textwrap
import optparse

class TextWrapper:
    @staticmethod
    def wrap(text, width=70, **kw):
        result = []
        for line in text.split("\n"):
            result.extend(textwrap.wrap(line, width, **kw))
        return result
    @staticmethod
    def fill(text, width=70, **kw):
        result = []
        for line in text.split("\n"):
            result.append(textwrap.fill(line, width, **kw))
        return "\n".join(result)
                  

optparse.textwrap = TextWrapper()

parser = optparse.OptionParser(description="""\
einsamer nie als im august
erfuellungsstunde im gelaende
die roten und die goldenen braende
doch wo ist deiner gaerten lust
""")        

parser.add_option("-x", "--example", help="""\
die seen hell die himmel weich
die aecker rein und glaenzen leise
doch wo sind sieg und siegsbeweise \
aus dem von dir vertretenen reich \
wo alles sich durch glueck""")

parser.print_help()

You should probably replace the "\n" literals with os.linesep.

Peter