Here is a solution using plac (http://pypi.python.org/pypi/plac) and not OptionParse, in the case the Linux underlying command is grep:
import subprocess import plac @plac.annotations(help=('show help', 'flag', 'h')) def main(help): if help: script_usage = plac.parser_from(main).format_help() po = subprocess.Popen(['grep', '-h'], stderr=subprocess.PIPE) grep_usage = po.stderr.read() print script_usage print grep_usage main.add_help = False if __name__ == '__main__': plac.call(main) -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list