PMDF popstore & MessageStore Manager's Guide
PMDF-POP-6.0

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7.12 Management groups

Management groups are manipulated with the GROUP command. This command has four variants:
GROUP/ADD Add a new management group
GROUP/DELETE Delete a management group
GROUP/LIST List one or more management groups and any subgroups
GROUP/MODIFY Modify an existing management group
It is important to note that use of management groups is not required by the popstore. Moreover, when you place an account into a management group, that group is automatically created if it was not already defined. As such, you only need to use the GROUP command to establish group-subgroup relationships and to delete groups which are no longer being used. Use the GROUP/ADD command to add a new management group. If the group already exists, then an error will ensue and the existing group left unchanged. In that case, use the GROUP/MODIFY command to modify the existing group. To add the management groups class_97, class_98, class_99, and class_00 use the commands 

popstore> GROUP/ADD class_97
popstore> GROUP/ADD class_98
popstore> GROUP/ADD class_99
popstore> GROUP/ADD class_00
To then make a new group named students containing these four groups, issue the command 
popstore> GROUP/ADD STUDENTS CLASS_97,CLASS_98,CLASS_99,CLASS_00
The results can then be listed with the GROUP/LIST command as shown below.² 
popstore> GROUP/LIST STUDENTS
      Group name:  Subgroups contained within 
-------------------------------------------- 
        students:  class_97, class_98, class_99, class_00 
        class_97: 
        class_98: 
        class_99: 
        class_00: 
popstore>

After the Class of 1997 has graduated and left and the Class of 2001 arrives, the class_97 group can be removed, the class_01 group added, and the students group modified as follows 

popstore> GROUP/ADD class_01
popstore> GROUP/MODIFY students class_98,class_99,class_00,class_01
popstore> GROUP/DELETE class_97
popstore> GROUP/LIST students
      Group name:  Subgroups contained within 
-------------------------------------------- 
        students:  class_98, class_99, class_00, class_01 
        class_98: 
        class_99: 
        class_00: 
        class_01: 
popstore>

Note that the GROUP/DELETE command deletes just the specified group. It will recursively delete the subgroups contained within the specified group only when /RECUR is specified. Also, it does not delete the accounts contained within the group; to do that, use the "DELETE/GROUP=group_name *" command; e.g., 

popstore> DELETE/GROUP=class_97/RETURN/LOG/NOCONFIRM *

It is also important to note that a group may contain only a limited number of subgroups as immediate subgroups. Those subgroups may, of course, contain other subgroups. The limit on the number of immediate subgroups of a given group is controlled by the length in bytes of the names of each of those immediate subgroups. If there are to be N immediate subgroups and their combined name lengths are L, then N+L must be less than 236. If a group needs to contain more subgroups than allowed by that limit, nest its definition an extra level. For example, 

popstore> GROUP/ADD blah_x blah_01,blah_02,blah_03,...,blah_29
popstore> GROUP/ADD blah_y blah_30,blah_33,blah_34,...,blah_52
popstore> GROUP/ADD blah blah_x,blah_y
In the above example, the names blah_01, ..., blah_52 are collectively too long to be contained as immediate subgroups of a given group. Therefore they are split between the two groups blah_x and blah_y. Those two groups are then made subgroups of blah. Consequently, the group blah contains the all of the groups blah_01, ..., blah_52 as subgroups despite the length limitation.

Note

² Note that group names are case insensitive and that the popstore converts all group names to lower case.

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