Question

I’d like to display argparse help for my options the same way the default -h,--help and -v,--version are, without the ALLCAPS text after the option, or at least without the duplicated CAPS.

import argparse
p = argparse.ArgumentParser("a foo bar dustup")
p.add_argument('-i', '--ini', help="use alternate ini file")
print '\n', p.parse_args()

This is what I currently get with python foobar.py -h:

usage: a foo bar dustup [-h] [-i INI]

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -i INI, --ini INI     use alternate ini

And this is what I want:

usage: a foo bar dustup [-h] [-i INI]

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -i, --ini INI         use alternate ini

This would be acceptable too:

  -i, --ini             use alternate ini

I’m using python 2.7.

Answer 1

You could customize usage and assign metavar to an empty string:

import argparse

p = argparse.ArgumentParser("a foo bar dustup", usage='%(prog)s [-h] [-i INI]')
p.add_argument('-i', '--ini', help="use alternate ini file", metavar='')
p.print_help()

Output

usage: a foo bar dustup [-h] [-i INI]

optional arguments:
  -h, --help   show this help message and exit
  -i , --ini   use alternate ini file