After an hour googling, I can't find anybody who has had anything resembling this issue besides myself. I created a command line interface with argparse. Originally I had tried to leverage argparse's built in help text behavior. But my boss isn't satisfied with the default help text, so he is having me write up the full usage/help text in a text file and just display the entire file.
For some reason, in a certain case, its outputting the text twice.
Here is the basics of how my program is broken down:
I have a top level parser. I read in my help text file, set it to a string help_text, and then set "usage=help_text" on the parser. Then I create subparsers (4 of them and then a base case) to create subcommands. Only one of those subparsers has any additional arguments (one positional, one optional). Before I reworked the help text, I had help text for each individual subcommand by using "help=" but now those are all blank. Lastly, I have set up a base case to display the help text whenever no subcommands are given.
Here is the behavior I'm getting:
When I call the main function with no subcommands and no arguments, my help_text from the text file outputs, and then like 2-3 additional lines of boiler plate I can't seem to get rid of. Also because the word usage appears in my text file, it says "usage: usage"
When I call the main command and then type --help, the exact same thing happens as above.
When I call the one subcommand that has a required positional argument and I don't include that argument... it spits out the entire help text twice. Right above the second time it prints, it prints the default usage line for that subcommand.
Lastly, when I use a different subcommand that has no arguments and give it an argument (one too many) it spits out everything completely correctly without even the extra couple lines at the end.
I don't know how to make heads or tales about this. Here is the main function of the script (I can verify that this problem occurs only in the main function where argparse is used, not the other functions that the main function calls):
def main():
# Import help text from file
p = Path(__file__).with_name("help_text.txt")
with p.open() as file:
help_text = file.read()
# Configure the top level Parser
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(prog='hubmap-clt', description='Name of cli', usage=help_text)
subparsers = parser.add_subparsers()
# Create Subparsers to give subcommands
parser_transfer = subparsers.add_parser('subcommandone')
parser_transfer.add_argument('argument1', type=str)
parser_transfer.add_argument('--optionalargument', default='mydefault')
parser_login = subparsers.add_parser('subcommandtwo')
parser_whoami = subparsers.add_parser('subcommandthree')
parser_logout = subparsers.add_parser('subcommandfour')
# Assign subparsers to their respective functions
parser_subcommandone.set_defaults(func=subcommandone)
parser_subcommandtwo.set_defaults(func=subcommandtwo)
parser_subcommandthree.set_defaults(func=subcommandthree)
parser_subcommandfour.set_defaults(func=subcommandfour)
parser.set_defaults(func=base_case)
# Parse the arguments and call appropriate functions
args = parser.parse_args()
if len(sys.argv) == 1:
args.func(args, parser)
else:
args.func(args)
So to clarify:
Why does the extra couple lines of boiler-plat help text appear sometimes which looks like this:
name of cli
positional arguments:
{subcommandone,subcommandtwo,subcommandthree,subcommandfour}
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
Why does using subcommandone with too few arguments print out the help text twice (but NOT the extra lines of boiler-plate help text.
why does using subcommandtwo with one too MANY arguments print everything perfectly without any extra lines?
