rick wrote:
> Consider the following piece of code:
>
> parser = optparse.OptionParser(usage="usage: %prog <input filename>
> <output filename> [options]", add_help_option=False)
> parser.add_option("-d", type="string", action="store", dest="DELIM",
> default="|", help="single character delimiter in quotes (default: |)")
> (options, args) = parser.parse_args()
>
>
> Is there any way I can add help for the arguments (<input filename> and
> <output filename>) in the same table that optparse generates above the
> options section. Ideally, I would like the output as:
>
> ======================================================
> usage: DelimTOFixedWidth.py <input filename> <output filename> [options]
>
> required:
> input filename name of the delimited input file
> output filename name of fixed-width output file
>
> options:
> -d DELIM single character delimiter in quotes (default: |)
> ======================================================
>
> Is that possible using optparse?
Not easily, but that's exactly what the argparse_ module is for::
>>> import argparse
>>> parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(add_help=False)
>>> parser.add_argument('-d', dest='DELIM', default='|',
... help='character delimiter in quotes (default: %(default)s)')
>>> parser.add_argument('input_filename',
... help='name of the delimited input file')
>>> parser.add_argument('output_filename',
... help='name of fixed-width output file')
>>> parser.print_help()
usage: tasks.py [-d DELIM] input_filename output_filename
positional arguments:
input_filename name of the delimited input file
output_filename name of fixed-width output file
optional arguments:
-d DELIM character delimiter in quotes (default: |)
Note that argparse_ also figures out the correct usage message for you.
.. _argparse: http://argparse.python-hosting.com/
STeVe
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