Click: Arbitrary text wraps in help text

[sscherfke]

The help text of some options seems to be wrapped arbitrarily and in a very ugly way. I’m not sure if this is a bug or my fault:

$ mpw --help
Usage: mpw [OPTIONS] SITE

  Calculate a site password based on your master password.

Options:
  -u TEXT     Full name of the user.
  -t TEXT     The password template to use:
              - max     20 characters, contains
              symbols
              - long    14 characters, contains symbols
              - medium  8
              characters, contains symbols
              - basic   8 characters, no symbols
              - short   4 characters, no symbols
              - pin     4 numbers
  -c INTEGER  The value for the counter.
  --help      Show this message and exit.

Obviously, the text fits into the line (see the line - long 14 ....) but other lines are wrapped.

The code to reproduce it:

import click


@click.command()
@click.option('-u', 'user',
              help='Full name of the user.')
@click.option('-t', 'pwd_type', default='long',
              help="""The password template to use:
                        - max     20 characters, contains symbols
                        - long    14 characters, contains symbols
                        - medium  8 characters, contains symbols
                        - basic   8 characters, no symbols
                        - short   4 characters, no symbols
                        - pin     4 numbers""")
@click.option('-c', 'counter', default=1,
              help='The value for the counter.')
@click.argument('site')
def main(site, user, pwd_type, counter):
    """Calculate a site password based on your master password."""
    click.echo(site)
    click.echo(user)
    click.echo(pwd_type)
    click.echo(counter)


if __name__ == '__main__':
    main()

click 3.1
Python 3.4.1
OS X Mavericks

[mitsuhiko]

The parameter part of options gets rewrapped to fit the terminal size. I would not try to be super clever with formatting on a per parameter basis. That said, maybe it would make sense to have a mode to disable rewrapping or to control it better.

[sscherfke]

Yes, that would be useful. :-)

Until then, I’ll move the list to main’s docstring and prepend a \b.

[untitaker]

Maybe accept a "list of lines" and wrap each of them individually?

[lubomir]

Depending on the length of the actual file name the help output of the following script can get pretty weird:

@click.command()
@click.argument('input_file_name')
@click.argument('output_file_name')
def cli(input_file_name, output_file_name):
    pass

if __name__ == '__main__':
    cli()

$ very-very-long-command-name.py --help
Usage: very-very-long-command-name.py [OPTIONS] INPUT_FILE_NAME
                                      OUT
                                      PUT
                                      _FI
                                      LE_
                                      NAM
                                      E

Options:
  --help  Show this message and exit.

Obviously the second argument would fit on the second line unwrapped.

[timstaley]

As mentioned in issue #441, you can control the wrapping-width by setting max_content_width in the context_settings dict parameter of click.command, e.g.

@click.command(context_settings=dict(max_content_width=120))

[jcrotts]

Closing this, timstaley's answer lets you set the wrapping-width.

If you need to do extra formatting on the help text https://github.com/pallets/click/issues/255 has an example.

[reberac]

Hi,
It does not work for me...
The help text of some options is still wrapped arbitrarily (I see an impact when I fix max_content_width with a value lower than 80, however no change with a value greater than the default one.

I use :
click-7.0
Python 3.6.6 :: Anaconda custom (64-bit)
Mac El Capitan 10.11.6

Any suggestion ?

Thanks in advance
Aurélie

[espdev]

@reberac +1

It does not work for me.

@click.command(context_settings=dict(max_content_width=500))
@click.option('-E', '--entry-filter', type=click.Choice(FILTER_CHOICES), default=None,
              help=(
                  'Feed(s) entry filtering option with the following choices:\n'
                  '- "unpathed": produce only unpathed entries (domain only)\n'
                  '- "pathed": produce only pathed entries (domain/path)\n'
                  '- "exe-apk": produce only pathed URLs with .exe/.apk at the end\n'
                  '- "core-domains": produce core domains instead of FQDN (3 column from a feed)\n'
                  '- "drop-paths": produce only FQDN (2 column from a feed) without paths'
              ))

@jcrotts

Closing this, timstaley's answer lets you set the wrapping-width.

It does not work in all cases. Currently, I cannot control how parameter help text will be formatted.

[JeCarl]

I got uncontrolled linebreaks too.
Just like in the example from @espdev with the "drop-paths"
Increasing the max_content_width did not solve the problem for me.

Has anyone one found already a solution ?