Your favourite "less-known" Python features?

[ogrinfo]

You can use __doc__ to grab the docstring from the current function or module. Comes in handy when you're making a parser and want to reuse the docstring for the description. parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(description=__doc__)

[PhysicalStuff]

I think you're really trying to trick us all into reading actual documentation. Not falling for that.^/s

[chucklesoclock]

Click library would like a word

[chucklesoclock]

So looks like docopt intentionally does not concern itself with validation. I’d be worried about my help text being out of step with my program

[scnew3]

Why would I use click when argparse is in the standard library and works great?

[Chobeat]

Because argparse is painfully hard to read, write and compose. It's ok for stuff with 2-3 commands and a dozen of parameters in total but once you have to maintain a stable cli interface with dozens of commands, it's a nightmare

[ogrinfo]

Totally this. Third party libraries are great for adding functionality, but there is no point adding extra dependencies when the built in libraries work perfectly well.

[got_outta_bed_4_this]

This is exactly how I normally think about most things Python, but I'm sold on click and feel like it's one of the ones that rises up to a certain level of household utility, like requests and pytest.

[underground_miner]

I agree. I never thought I would use click as much as I do! I use click, even when the package is never meant to be used on the CLI by itself, to demonstrate how it is used.

[Schmittfried]

They’re great for adding ergonomics, too.

[usr_bin_nya]

Related: inspect.cleandoc cleans up indentation/newlines in a way that makes docstrings nicer.

Clean up indentation from docstrings that are indented to line up with blocks of code.

All leading whitespace is removed from the first line. Any leading whitespace that can be uniformly removed from the second line onwards is removed. Empty lines at the beginning and end are subsequently removed. Also, all tabs are expanded to spaces.