Count László de Almásy 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. > > It would look something like this: > > % program --help > > usage: program [options] > > This is my description text. > > options: > -f BAR, --foo=BAR > A sample option > --version show program's version number and exit > --help show this help message and exit > > ==> Now how about closing text after the options list?
Maybe subclass OptionParser? py> from optparse import OptionParser py> py> class OptionParserSpecial(OptionParser): ... def format_help(self, *args, **kwargs): ... result = OptionParser.format_help(self, *args, **kwargs) ... if hasattr(self, 'trailing_text'): ... return "%s\n%s\n" % (result, self.trailing_text) ... else: ... return result ... py> py> usage = 'usage: dosomething [options] path' py> parser = OptionParserSpecial(usage) py> parser.add_option("-a", "--all", dest="all", ... action='store_true', default=False, ... help="don't skip hidden or binary files") <Option at 0x404f61ac: -a/--all> py> parser.trailing_text = 'Some extra info here.' py> py> options, args = parser.parse_args() py> py> parser.print_help() Usage: dosomething [options] path Options: -h, --help show this help message and exit -a, --all don't skip hidden or binary files Some extra info here. James -- James Stroud UCLA-DOE Institute for Genomics and Proteomics Box 951570 Los Angeles, CA 90095 http://www.jamesstroud.com/ -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list