[issue29626] Issue with spacing in argparse module while using help

[paul j3]

paul j3 added the comment:

I don't anticipate  any backward compatibility issues with the proposed patch.  
But at the same time it feels almost too trivial of an issue to merit a patch.  

A short metavar such as `metavar="ID"' or even `metavar="_"' would be nearly as 
compact, and still leave an indicator of the required argument (in usage as 
well as the help).

I'm not even sure if disallowing a blank metavar is worth the change.

As indicated before I've only seen this extra space problem when I or others 
suggest the blank metavar as a way making a more compact help invocation.  That 
has come up frequently on SO, but I can't find a relevant bug/issue.  

https://stackoverflow.com/a/18280876/901925 - here I suggest suppressing the 
help line and putting custom info in the group's description.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9642692/argparse-help-without-duplicate-allcaps
 - suggests a help formatter subclass

So maybe the bigger issue is, can we make it easier to customize the the help 
invocation formatting?

Things to consider:

- metavar affects both the help line and usage

- setting help width and indentation is a messy part of the formatter

- there are unittests for long and long-long-longer option names to test these 
indentation issues.

As with some other help formatter issues, we are treading a fine line between 
making trivial patches, and substantive ones that make it cleaner and more 
robust.

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[issue29626] Issue with spacing in argparse module while using help

[R. David Murray]

R. David Murray added the comment:

If I'm interpreted what the OP wrote correctly, he wanted the help text to not 
show that the option takes an argument, but instead rely on the help text to 
show that.  That works for the option text, but it doesn't work for the 
synopsis (the synopsis is just wrong in that case).

Probably a blank metavar should just be rejected because of the issue with they 
synopsis.  That should only be done in 3.7 if we do it, though.

Perhaps the OP will respond to explain the blank-metavar use case in more 
detail.

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[issue29626] Issue with spacing in argparse module while using help

[Cheryl Sabella]

Cheryl Sabella added the comment:

I submitted a PR for this based on paul.j3's suggested change:

  def _format_action_invocation(self, action):
   
   for option_string in action.option_strings:
   if len(args_string)>0:
parts.append('%s %s' % (option_string, args_string))
   else:
parts.append('%s' % option_string)
   

I created a test that would have duplicated the original issue and, with the 
change, no longer prints the extra blank.

To Serhiy's point, I'm not sure if an empty metavar makes sense since it's 
intention is to give the parser a way to refer to the expected arguments within 
the help messages. 

However, with no metavar at all, the help output is:
  -f FOO, --foo FOO

With metavar = '' (and this change), the output is:
-f, --foo 

With metavar = '' (and without this change), the output is:
-f , --foo

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[issue29626] Issue with spacing in argparse module while using help

[Serhiy Storchaka]

Serhiy Storchaka added the comment:

Does an empty metavar make sense? This makes the option with argument 
non-distinguising from the option without argument.

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[issue29626] Issue with spacing in argparse module while using help

[R. David Murray]

Changes by R. David Murray :


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[issue29626] Issue with spacing in argparse module while using help

[Cheryl Sabella]

Changes by Cheryl Sabella :


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[issue29626] Issue with spacing in argparse module while using help

[paul j3]

Changes by paul j3 :


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[issue29626] Issue with spacing in argparse module while using help

[paul j3]

paul j3 added the comment:

Sorry, I missed that.  For some reason I looking something bigger.

That's coming from the `metavar=""'.

If I specify `metavar="xxx" that help line will have

-p xxx, --projectid xxx

Replace the 'xxx` with '', and you still have space between '-p' and ','.

Now that I see it, it looks familiar.  I noted it in passing in StackOverflow 
answer, http://stackoverflow.com/a/40497623/901925

I can't find a related bug/issue.  

It's a natural consequence of the formatting in 
HelpFormatter._format_action_invocation

# if the Optional takes a value, format is:
#-s ARGS, --long ARGS
parts.append('%s %s' % (option_string, args_string))

There's no special handling for the case where ARGS is blank.

That formatter method could be customized as suggested in 

http://stackoverflow.com/a/23941599/901925

Often people want a more compact invocation like:

  -s, --long ARGhelp

Usage gets that space between option_string and args_string, but it gets 
striped out later.

So the fix (not tested) would something like:

  def _format_action_invocation(self, action):
   
   for option_string in action.option_strings:
   if len(args_string)>0:
parts.append('%s %s' % (option_string, args_string))
   else:
parts.append('%s' % option_string)
   

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[issue29626] Issue with spacing in argparse module while using help

[Falguniben Jhaveri]

Falguniben Jhaveri added the comment:

There is an extra spacing here if you look carefully. I have commented
above the code. Similarly it happens for "-o" too but not for other
alphabets.

1427:~/mypy/argdev$ python3 issue29626.py delete -h
usage: cli delete [-h] [-p] userid

Deletes a user in your organization.

positional arguments:
  userid The userid of user.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help show this help message and exit
// extra space after p and ",".
  -p , --projectid   Specify the project ID of project from where you want
to
 delete the user or else user will be deleted from
 organization.

I saw this issue as I use argparse for my CLI usecase which has nested
commands.

On Mon, Feb 27, 2017 at 2:39 PM, paul j3  wrote:

>
> paul j3 added the comment:
>
> This help looks normal:
>
> 1427:~/mypy/argdev$ python3 issue29626.py delete -h
> usage: cli delete [-h] [-p] userid
>
> Deletes a user in your organization.
>
> positional arguments:
>   userid The userid of user.
>
> optional arguments:
>   -h, --help show this help message and exit
>   -p , --projectid   Specify the project ID of project from where you want
> to
>  delete the user or else user will be deleted from
>  organization.
>
> So does this help for the nested subparser:
>
> 1430:~/mypy/argdev$ python3 issue29626.py nodes list -h
> usage: cli nodes list [-h] [-p] [-o]
>
> Lists nodes in your current project
>
> optional arguments:
>   -h, --help   show this help message and exit
>   -p, --projectid
>   -o, --org(For administrators only) Lists all the nodes in
>
> This double layered subparsers is not common, and might not even be
> included in the unittest file.  But provided you don't try anything too
> tricky it does work.  I've seen a few questions along this line on
> StackOverflow.
>
> Note that the help line for '-p' in the second case is empty because you
> did not specify any help string (as you did for 'delete').
>
> --
>
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[issue29626] Issue with spacing in argparse module while using help

[paul j3]

paul j3 added the comment:

This help looks normal:

1427:~/mypy/argdev$ python3 issue29626.py delete -h
usage: cli delete [-h] [-p] userid

Deletes a user in your organization.

positional arguments:
  userid The userid of user.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help show this help message and exit
  -p , --projectid   Specify the project ID of project from where you want to
 delete the user or else user will be deleted from
 organization.

So does this help for the nested subparser:

1430:~/mypy/argdev$ python3 issue29626.py nodes list -h
usage: cli nodes list [-h] [-p] [-o]

Lists nodes in your current project

optional arguments:
  -h, --help   show this help message and exit
  -p, --projectid
  -o, --org(For administrators only) Lists all the nodes in

This double layered subparsers is not common, and might not even be included in 
the unittest file.  But provided you don't try anything too tricky it does 
work.  I've seen a few questions along this line on StackOverflow.

Note that the help line for '-p' in the second case is empty because you did 
not specify any help string (as you did for 'delete').

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[issue29626] Issue with spacing in argparse module while using help

[Falguniben Jhaveri]

Falguniben Jhaveri added the comment:

Sample code to repro this:

import argparse

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(prog='cli')
subparsers = parser.add_subparsers(dest="command")

subparsers_user_delete = subparsers.add_parser("delete", help="Deletes a 
user in your organization.",
description="Deletes a 
user in your organization.")
subparsers_user_delete.add_argument("userid", help="The userid of user.", 
default=None, type=int)
subparsers_user_delete.add_argument("-p", "--projectid", metavar="",
help="Specify the project ID of project 
from where you want to delete"
 " the user or else user will be 
deleted from organization.", type=int,
default=None)

parser_nodes = subparsers.add_parser('nodes')
sp = parser_nodes.add_subparsers()
p1 = sp.add_parser('list', description='Lists nodes in your current 
project')
p1.add_argument('-p', '--projectid', action='store_true')
p1.add_argument('-o', '--org', action='store_true', help=' (For 
administrators only) Lists all the nodes in')
parser.parse_args()

Please run following command:
$issue.py delete -h

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[issue29626] Issue with spacing in argparse module while using help

[paul j3]

paul j3 added the comment:

With this setup

import argparse
parser=argparse.ArgumentParser(prog='cli')
parser.add_argument('nodes')
sp=parser.add_subparsers()
p1 = sp.add_parser('list', description='Lists nodes in your current project')
p1.add_argument('-p','--projectid', action='store_true')
p1.add_argument('-o', '--org', action='store_true', help=' (For administrators 
only) Lists all the nodes in')
parser.parse_args()


this help looks normal

1354:~/mypy/argdev$ python3 issue29626.py nodes list -h
usage: cli nodes list [-h] [-p] [-o]

Lists nodes in your current project

optional arguments:
  -h, --help   show this help message and exit
  -p, --projectid
  -o, --org(For administrators only) Lists all the nodes in

Without further feedback this issue should be closed

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[issue29626] Issue with spacing in argparse module while using help

[paul j3]

Changes by paul j3 :


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[issue29626] Issue with spacing in argparse module while using help

[paul j3]

paul j3 added the comment:

We need to see the parser setup as well.  I've never seen a bug like this 
before.  The `usage` line suggests that you are using subparsers.

It might be better if you asked this on StackOverFlow with a repeatable code 
example.  That's a better place to get debugging help of your own code.  Come 
back here if others think this is a problem with `argparse` itself rather than 
your own setup.

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[issue29626] Issue with spacing in argparse module while using help

[Falguniben Jhaveri]

New submission from Falguniben Jhaveri:

When I use argparse the optional arguments with character "-p" and "-s" has 
improper spacing while using help/usage command.

Sample out put from argparse module:

usage: cli node list [-h] [-p] [-o]

Lists nodes in your current project.

optional arguments:
  -h, --help show this help message and exit
  // extra space after p
  -p , --projectid  
  -o, --org (For administrators only) Lists all the nodes in

--
components: Library (Lib)
messages: 288389
nosy: falu2010
priority: normal
severity: normal
status: open
title: Issue with spacing in argparse module while using help
versions: Python 2.7

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