Dear Gap Forum,

Erhard Aichinger <erhard@bruckner.stoch.uni-linz.ac.at> writes:

... but I suppose that there is a lot of more detailled information
on computing with p-groups.

I see that one possibility to learn more about computing with
p-groups is reading the source of the GAP-functions;
but you can probably point out a better source of information
(e.g. Master's or PhD-theses) on this subject to me.

Sims' book provides references for computation with
and structural investigations of p-groups.

The following -- which intersects some of his material --
may also be of some interest to you.

* Computing power commutator presentations for p-quotients
Newman & O'Brien (1996, to appear); Havas & Newman (1980)

* Generating descriptions of p-groups (Newman, 1977; O'Brien, 1990)

* Isomorphism testing (O'Brien, 1994);
Computing automorphism groups (O'Brien, 1995)

* Collection -- Leedham-Green and Soicher (1990), Vaughan-Lee (1990)

* Structural analysis: most of these deal with soluble groups;

-- Laue, Neub"user and Schoenwaelder (1984)

-- Glasby and Slattery (1990) 

-- F. Celler, J.Neub"user, C.R.B. Wright.
Some remarks on the computation of complements and normalizers in
soluble groups.
Acta Applicandai Mathematicai Vol 21, pages 57 - 76, 1990.

-- M. Mecky, J. Neub"user.
Some remarks on the computation of conjugacy classes of soluble groups.
Bulletin of the Australian Math Soc. Vol 40, Nr 2, pages 281 - 293, 1989.

- Bettina Eick (1996, to appear)
Special presentations for finite soluble groups and computing
(Pre-)Frattini subgroups.
Available by anon ftp from ftp.math.rwth-aachen.de
get pub/incoming/special.dvi.Z

>Bettina provided me with the following description of its contents:

>"I recall the definitions of polycyclic generating sequences and
>special pcgs. Then the (almost trivial) computation of a Hall
>system and of maximal subgroups of a group with special pcgs
>is described. Finally I introduce a method to compute a prefrattini
>subgroup of a group with special pcgs and derive a method to
>compute the Frattini subgroup of such a group."

Precise references for these papers can be found in an algebra
BibTeX database maintained by me; it is available via my home-page
http://www.math.rwth-aachen.de/~obrien
My papers are also available directly via my home-page.

The package anupq distributed with GAP provides access to
the first four of these. The structural analysis algorithms
are also available directly in GAP.

Best wishes,
Eamonn