How to insert newlines on argparse help text?

Question

I'm using argparse in Python 2.7 for parsing input options. One of my options is a multiple choice. I want to make a list in its help text, e.g.

from argparse import ArgumentParser  parser = ArgumentParser(description='test')  parser.add_argument('-g', choices=['a', 'b', 'g', 'd', 'e'], default='a',     help="Some option, where\n"          " a = alpha\n"          " b = beta\n"          " g = gamma\n"          " d = delta\n"          " e = epsilon")  parser.parse_args() 

However, argparse strips all newlines and consecutive spaces. The result looks like

 ~/Downloads:52$ python2.7 x.py -h usage: x.py [-h] [-g {a,b,g,d,e}]  test  optional arguments:   -h, --help      show this help message and exit   -g {a,b,g,d,e}  Some option, where a = alpha b = beta g = gamma d = delta e                   = epsilon 

How to insert newlines in the help text?

Answer 1

Try using RawTextHelpFormatter:

from argparse import RawTextHelpFormatter parser = ArgumentParser(description='test', formatter_class=RawTextHelpFormatter)