argparse formatter_class issue for RawDescriptionHelpFormatter

[ckessler]

BPO	34174
Nosy	@Mariatta

^{Note: these values reflect the state of the issue at the time it was migrated and might not reflect the current state.}

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GitHub fields:

assignee = None
closed_at = <Date 2018-07-20.20:42:30.109>
created_at = <Date 2018-07-20.20:34:50.734>
labels = ['docs', 'invalid', 'performance']
title = 'argparse formatter_class issue for RawDescriptionHelpFormatter'
updated_at = <Date 2018-07-23.16:00:05.343>
user = 'https://bugs.python.org/ckessler'

bugs.python.org fields:

activity = <Date 2018-07-23.16:00:05.343>
actor = 'paul.j3'
assignee = 'docs@python'
closed = True
closed_date = <Date 2018-07-20.20:42:30.109>
closer = 'Mariatta'
components = ['Documentation']
creation = <Date 2018-07-20.20:34:50.734>
creator = 'ckessler'
dependencies = []
files = []
hgrepos = []
issue_num = 34174
keywords = []
message_count = 4.0
messages = ['322034', '322036', '322037', '322228']
nosy_count = 4.0
nosy_names = ['docs@python', 'paul.j3', 'Mariatta', 'ckessler']
pr_nums = []
priority = 'normal'
resolution = 'not a bug'
stage = 'resolved'
status = 'closed'
superseder = None
type = 'resource usage'
url = 'https://bugs.python.org/issue34174'
versions = ['Python 2.7']

[ckessler]

In document https://docs.python.org/2/library/argparse.html#argparse.RawDescriptionHelpFormatter

this will fail with NameError: global name 'textwrap' is not defiend

>>> parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(
...     prog='PROG',
...     formatter_class=argparse.RawDescriptionHelpFormatter,
...     description=textwrap.dedent('''\
...         Please do not mess up this text!
...         

---

... I have indented it
... exactly the way
... I want it
... '''))

[Mariatta]

Thanks for the report.

To make it work, you'll have to import textwrap first.

We don't always add all the necessary imports in our code snippets and examples, and we don't need to start adding imports into code examples either. So I'm closing this issue.

Thanks again.

[ckessler]

Thanks for the quick response!
I didnt see it anywhere in the documentation on that page so I assumed it was built in with argparse.
Thanks!

[paulj3]

argparse does import 'textwrap', but as '_textwrap', so it could be used with:

    argparse._textwrap.dedent(...)

Importing your own is cleaner.