[issue9694] argparse: Default Help Message Lists Required Args As Optional

[Steven Bethard]

Steven Bethard <steven.bethard at gmail.com> added the comment:

So it strikes me that there already exists an officially supported way to rename your option groups. Just only create your own option groups (never use the default ones) and only put arguments there, e.g.:

------------------------- temp.py --------------------------
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description = 'Do something', add_help=False)
flags = parser.add_argument_group('flag arguments')
flags.add_argument('-h', '--help', action='help')
flags.add_argument('--reqarg', '-r', help='This is required', required=True)
flags.add_argument('--optarg','-o', help="This is optional", required=False)
args = parser.parse_args()
------------------------------------------------------------
$ python temp.py --help
usage: temp.py [-h] --reqarg REQARG [--optarg OPTARG]

Do something

flag arguments:
  -h, --help
  --reqarg REQARG, -r REQARG
                        This is required
  --optarg OPTARG, -o OPTARG
                        This is optional
------------------------------------------------------------

The documentation for action='help' needs to be added, as pointed out in Issue# 10772.

So basically, the API for customizing group names is already there. So I'm changing this to a documentation request - there should be an example in the docs showing how to change the default group names as above.

----------
assignee:  -> docs at python
components: +Documentation -Library (Lib)
nosy: +docs at python
stage:  -> needs patch
versions: +Python 3.3 -Python 3.2

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<http://bugs.python.org/issue9694>
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