I'm using docopt
in an example for a module I'm working on, and all the option default values are working except one. I've modified all the code containing and surrounding the option trying to identify the problem, but it won't take a default value!
My options block looks like this:
Options:
--help Show this message and exit
--version Show version info and exit
-w WIDTH --width=WIDTH The out to out width of the deck (feet) [default: 73]
-g GIRDERS --girders=GIRDERS The number of girders [default: 8]
-h HEIGHT --height=HEIGHT The height of the girders (inches) [default: 56]
-t THICK --thick=THICK The deck thickness (inches) [default: 8]
-a ADIM --adim=ADIM The "A" dimension, max deck thick @ CL girder [default: 12]
-l LSLP --leftslope=LSLP The left-hand deck slope (ft/ft) [default: -0.02]
-r RSLP --rightslope=RSLP The right-hand deck slope (ft/ft) [default: -0.02]
-c --center Indicates pivot point is at center of bridge
-o OFFSET --offset=OFFSET The offset of pivot point from center [default: 0]
The girders
option never has a default value!
I re-read this question several times, but it seems unrelated.
So per the suggestion in the other question I cloned the docopt repo and installed the current tip with zero effect. Now that I had the source code though I decided to do some debugging and see if I could find the problem.
On line 200 in the parse method on the Option class is the regex used to grab default values:
matched = re.findall('\[default: (.*)\]', description, flags=re.I)
After printing a bunch of the surrounding variables I found that the description
vars value was an empty string. Here is the line that sets the description:
options, _, description = option_description.strip().partition(' ')
The part that caught my eye was this: .partition(' ')
, that's two spaces. So after updating my code successfully I head back to the docs and search for "spaces": https://github.com/docopt/docopt#option-descriptions-format sixth bullet:
"Use two spaces to separate options with their informal description"
TL;DR RTFM (or at least the code).
Bonus tip: docopt understands multi-line descriptions, so you can just wrap anything that crosses the 80 character line:
Options:
--help Show this message and exit
--version Show version info and exit
-w WIDTH --width=WIDTH The out to out width of the deck (feet)
[default: 73]
-g GIRDERS --girders=GIRDERS The number of girders [default: 8]
-h HEIGHT --height=HEIGHT The height of the girders (inches)
[default: 56]
-t THICK --thick=THICK The deck thickness (inches) [default: 8]
-a ADIM --adim=ADIM The "A" dimension, max. deck thickness at
centerline of girder (inches) [default: 12]
-l LSLP --leftslope=LSLP The left-hand deck slope (ft/ft)
[default: -0.02]
-r RSLP --rightslope=RSLP The right-hand deck slope (ft/ft)
[default: -0.02]
-c --center Indicates pivot point is at center of bridge
-o OFFSET --offset=OFFSET The offset of pivot point from center
[default: 0]
Not quite as readable, but parses correctly.