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

Gelonida N gelonida at gmail.com
Sat Sep 10 16:43:39 EDT 2011


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.





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