argparse subparser --help output doesn't show the subparser's description

Question

If I create a subparser with a specific help string, this string is not displayed when the user runs myprog command --help:

parser = argparse.Ar         


        

Answer 1

The add_parser method accepts (most) of the parameters that a ArgumentParser constructor does.

https://docs.python.org/3/library/argparse.html#sub-commands

It's easy to overlook this sentence in the add_subparsers paragraph:

This object has a single method, add_parser(), which takes a command name and any ArgumentParser constructor arguments, and returns an ArgumentParser object that can be modified as usual.

In [93]: parser=argparse.ArgumentParser()

In [94]: sp = parser.add_subparsers(dest='cmd',description='subparses description')

In [95]: p1 = sp.add_parser('foo',help='foo help', description='subparser description')
In [96]: p1.add_argument('--bar');

help for the main parser:

In [97]: parser.parse_args('-h'.split())
usage: ipython3 [-h] {foo} ...

optional arguments:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit

subcommands:
  subparses description

  {foo}
    foo       foo help
...

help for the subparser:

In [98]: parser.parse_args('foo -h'.split())
usage: ipython3 foo [-h] [--bar BAR]

subparser description

optional arguments:
  -h, --help  show this help message and exit
  --bar BAR
...