optparse: add trailing text in help message?

[Duncan Booth]

"Count László de Almásy" <calmasy at gmail.com> wrote:

> Is there a standard way with optparse to include a blurb of text after
> the usage section, description, and the list of options?  This is
> often useful to include examples or closing comments when the help
> message is printed out.  Many of the GNU commands do this.

Yes, but only if you are running in Python 2.5.

>From "What's new in Python 2.5":

> The optparse module was updated to version 1.5.1 of the Optik library.
> The OptionParser class gained an epilog attribute, a string that will
> be printed after the help message, and a destroy() method to break
> reference cycles created by the object. (Contributed by Greg Ward.) 

In other words:

>>> from optparse import OptionParser
>>> usage = "usage: %prog [options] arg1 arg2"
>>> epilog = "that's all folks!"
>>> parser = OptionParser(usage=usage, epilog=epilog)
>>> parser.parse_args(['', '--help'])
Usage:  [options] arg1 arg2

Options:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit

that's all folks!