How to string format OptionParser() help message?

Question

How to string format OptionParser() help message? It seems to ignore the new line character? Please see below code.

parser = OptionParser()
parser.add_option("--s", dest="s", type="string", help="first line \n second line")

Intention:

current output:
.... first line \n second line

expected output:
.... first line 
     second line

Answer 1

Might I suggest argparse?

I'm not sure if this is supported in OptionParser, but I would suggest using a triple quote
i.e:

parser = OptionParser()
parser.add_option('--s',
                  dest='s'
                  type='string'
                  help='''
With triple quotes I can directly put in anything including line spaces.
\n will appear as a string rather than a newline.''')

argparse example:

import argparse
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
parser.add_argument('--s',
                  help='''first line
second line''')
args = parser.parse_args()
print args.s