[GAP Forum] Local search?

[wh at icparc.ic.ac.uk]

Dear GAP Forum,

Are any of you aware of any software (GAP or otherwise) or literature
regarding using local search to find a group element with certain properties?
I am interested in using such techniques, so any such software or literature
would be useful to me.

By local search I mean techniques along the lines of starting with a
more-or-less random element that does not have the desired properties,
moving to a "nearby"/similar element that might be closer to having the
desired properties, and repeating until one either finds an element that
meets the requirements or gives up.  (Examples of such techniques include
hill climbing, tabu search, greedy randomised adaptive search procedures
(GRASPs), and possibly simulated annealing and genetic algorithms.)

Basically, I want to do a relatively quick check to see whether I can find
such an element, but I don't care too much if I fail to find one, even if
one exists.

Cheers,
Warwick